'^mmmmmm 

A 


T 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


FRANCE 


FRANCE 

Her  People  and  Her  Spirit 


By 
LAURENCE  JERROLD 


THE  REAL  FRANCE,  THE  FRENCH  AND 
THE  ENGLISH,  ETC. 


WITH  MANY  ILLUSTRATIONS 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT  1916 
THE  BOBBS-MEBRILL  COMPANY 


PRESS  OF 

BRAUNWORTH    A  CO. 
NTtRS   »NO   BOOKBINDERS 
":  BROOKLYN.   N.  Y. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  FAGB 

I    1871-1914 1 

II   THE  LAND  AND  THE  PEOPLE 18 

III  THE  FRENCH  SPIRIT 28 

IV  THE  FUTURE  OF  THE  FRENCH  SPIRIT         ...  50 
V   FRANCE  AMONG  THE  NATIONS            ....  67 

VI   GOVERNMENT — AUTHORITY 86 

VII   GOVERNMENT — PARLIAMENT 102 

VIII    GOVERNMENT — ORGANIZATION  .         .         .         .115 

IX   FRANCE  BEYOND  THE  SEAS 128 

X  ARMS— IN  PEACE 138 

XI   ARMS— IN  WAR 158 

XII   CHURCHES 181 

XIII  EARNERS 203 

XIV  OWNERS 219 

XV   THE  SOIL 239 

XVI   THE  CITIES 258 

XVII   MEN  AND  WOMEN 278 

XVIII    LETTERS 307 

XIX    MEN  WHO  MADE  MODERN  FRANCE  ....  332 

XX  LESJEUNES 356 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 377 

INDEX                                           •         ....  387 


2042137 


FRANCE 


FRANCE 

CHAPTER  I 

1871-1914. 


FOB  forty-three  years  France  waited.  The  day 
came  at  last.  It  was  not  of  France's  seeking,  yet  she 
did  not  wince  when  it  came.  Few  Frenchmen  on  the  eve 
toasted  (as  the  German  sailors  did)  "an  den  Tag";  all 
drank  to  the  day  when  it  was  there.  That  the  "Re- 
venge party,"  the  "Revanchards,"  were  a  power  in 
France  forty-three  years  after  the  War  of  1870  was 
an  invention  of  many  German  and  a  few  English 
politicians,  the  latter  afterward  being  wiser  and  sad- 
der. Every  one  knowing  France  knows  that  there 
were  hardly  any  circumstances  conceivable  in  which 
France  would  have  declared  war  on  Germany,  even  to 
win  back  Alsace-Lorraine.  Germany  chose  the  day; 
France  rose  like  one  man,  it  was  revenge  at  last.  The 
French  democracy  in  all  honesty  would  never  have  had 
the  heart,  for  the  sake  of  revenge,  to  plunge  Europe 
into  what  was  bound  to  be  the  worst  war  in  modern 
history.  France  feared  Germany,  but  that  there  was 
1 


FRANCE 

more  deep  humane  scruple  than  cowardice  in  her  re- 
luctance, no  one  knowing  France  doubts.  The  foe 
took  without  turning  a  hair  the  onus  of  blood  guilt- 
iness. "En  avant"  was  the  answer : 

"En  avant!    Tant  pis  pour  qui  tombe, 
La  mort  n'est  rien.    Vive  la  tombe, 

Si  le  pays  en  sort  vivant, 

En  avant! 


"Si  tu  veux  ma  mort,  mort  a  moi, 
Et  vive  toi,  ma  France!" 

It  is  not  great  poetry,  this  of  noble-hearted  and 
simple-minded  Paul  Deroulede,  who,  chief  of  all  the 
Revanchards,  died  too  soon,  and  knew  he  would,  for 
he  said  just  before  dying,  "One  never  lives  to  see 
one's  dream  come  true."  But  it  is  poetry  of  battle- 
fields, bayonet  charges,  trenches  and  storming  parties. 

The  passion  of  "revenge"  for  1870  lay,  except  in 
a  few,  dormant.  The  few  never  would  have  had  the 
strength  to  send  the  nation  to  war.  But  the  fire  was 
there,  latent,  but  a  fire.  The  spark  set  it  ablaze,  and 
France  flamed  up  more  than  even  she  herself  knew 
she  would.  After  all,  one  was  wrong ;  the  "revanche" 
still  was  a  cry  to  call  the  French  to  arms.  But  one 
was  right,  too;  the  spark  did  it.  If  France  wanted 
revenge,  she  must  thank  Germany.  France  herself 
would  never  have  given  herself  the  chance.  Germany, 
2 


FRANCE 

with  a  cynicism  that  was  almost  ingenuous,  gave  her 
the  chance. 

She  took  it;  she  was  instantly  changed.  She  was 
the  real  France  again.  She  was  no  longer  self-con- 
scious, petty,  frivolous,  divided,  ironical,  cynical;  she 
was  the  real  France,  one  nation  with  one  heart,  the 
most  one-hearted,  deeply  united  nation  in  the  world, 
the  real  France  that  true  observers  had  always  seen 
beneath  the  surface.  She  was  one  huge  battalion  of 
soldiers  fighting  on  fields,  in  trenches,  in  forts;  peas- 
ants, dukes,  millionaires,  politicians,  priests,  bishops, 
anarchists,  all  of  one  mind.  War  is  horrible.  A  whole 
people  standing  against  the  invader  is  beautiful. 

Saturday,  August  1,  1914:  pictures  of  Paris  and 
France  that  one  can  never  forget.  "£a  y  est,"  a 
piece  of  paper  posted  up  at  the  post-office.  "Ordre 
de  mobilisation  generate.  First  day  of  the  mobiliza- 
tion, Sunday,  August  2,  to  date  from  midnight  of 
Saturday."  In  Paris  the  cabman,  the  concierge,  the 
boulevardier,  the  man  of  fashion,  side  by  side  reading 
it;  at  the  seaside  the  fisherman,  the  Parisian  just 
arrived  for  the  summer,  the  village  postman,  the 
fishwives,  side  by  side  reading  it.  "Here  it  is!" 
nothing  more.  Not  a  wince,  not  a  sigh ;  a  groan,  or 
murmur  even,  is  unthinkable.  No  tears  from  wife 
or  mother — they  come  later,  quietly,  at  home,  when 
no  one  is  looking.  Not  an  instant's  cowardice  or  re- 
volt or  doubt  in  the  whole  people. 
3 


FRANCE 

From  that  midnight  onward  through  the  fifteen 
idays  of  mobilization  the  French  nation  took  up  arms. 
Trains  bore  troops,  troops  marched,  not  a  man  in  a 
thousand  flinched,  not  a  mother  or  wife  in  a  hundred 
showed  her  tears.  In  men's  rifles  were  stuck  flowers, 
officers  took  nosegays  as  they  rode,  cannons  rolled 
garlanded  and  wreathed  with  laurel.  The  Marseil- 
laise and  Mehul's  noble  Chant  du  Depart  sounded 
down  the  Paris  boulevards.  No  "A  Berlin"  harking 
ominously  back  to  1870;  some  hoots  for  the  German 
Emperor;  one  evening  of  smashing  a  dozen  German 
shops  in  Paris;  after  that  a  great  quiet  determina- 
tion. The  tears  came  often  to  one's  eyes  as  one  saw 
in  the  streets  small  simple  signs  of  the  great  upheaval 
that  found  every  man  in  the  nation  suddenly  ready: 
pieces  of  paper  posted  on  tiny  shops'  closed  shutters, 
"The  cobbler  left  on  the  first  day  of  mobilization"; 
poor  little  calico  tricolor  flags  hung  out  from  back 
kitchen  windows;  the  concierge,  the  cafe  waiter,  the 
shop  clerk,  pictures  of  comfortable  peacefulness,  all 
"going"  and  saying,  "I  am  for  the  Ardennes  and 
shall  see  something,"  "I  for  Alsace,  which  will  be  just 
as  good,"  "Better  it  should  come  now,  we  have  put 
up  with  them  long  enough."  The  observer  from  a 
nation  without  conscription  understood  at  last  what  a 
nation  in  arms  means;  after  all,  these  clerks,  these 
waiters,  these  concierges,  all  these  small  peaceful  peo- 
ple had  all  been  soldiers  in  their  twenties,  for  two  or 
4 


FRANCE 

three  years,  in  peace-time :  give  them  back  their  rifles 
and  they  feel  twenty  again — twenty  again  in  a  holy 
cause. 

n 

August  4,  1914 :  an  August  4  that  will  overshadow 
in  French  history  the  Nuit  du  4  Aout  of  the  First 
Revolution,  when  'the  nobles  renounced  their  privi- 
leges. On  this  August  4  the  nation  foreswore  every- 
thing except  the  holy  cause  of  the  nation's  life.  I 
was  early  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies.  I  shook  hands 
with  the  Chief  Usher,  who  said,  "At  last  we  are  among 
ourselves."*  In  the  House  old  political  foes  met  and 
shook  hands  in  silence.  Royalists  and  Unified  Social- 
ists, Atheists  and  Papists  grasped  one  another's  hands. 
I  watched  from  above  the  bitterest,  deadliest  enemies 
of  five  days  before  cross  the  floor  toward  one  another 
and  shake  hands,  still  silently.  The  President  of  the 
Chamber:  he  speaks  first  of  Jean  Jaures  (the  whole 
House  stands)  murdered  on  the  eve  of  war,  at  the 
end  of  a  day  when  he  had  done  all  he  could  to  stave 
war  off;  the  whole  House,  those  who  worshiped 
Jaures  and  those  who  called  him  traitor,  is  standing; 
the  President  speaks  of  France  attacked  without  pre- 


*  In  the  years  of  peace  the  foreign  press  gallery  was  held 
like  a  fort  by  German  newspaper  correspondents  and  the 
sole  official  representative  of  the  foreign  press  accredited 
to  the  Parliamentary  authorities  (and  drawing  a  salary 
from  them)  was  the  correspondent  of  the  Frankfurter 
Zeitung. 


FRANCE 

tense  of  an  excuse,  and  as  he  finishes  one  great  shout 
of  "V'voe  la  France!"  comes  from  the  whole  House, 
from  those  who  once  were  Royalists,  Bonapartists, 
Republicans,  Anti-Clericals,  Socialists,  and  are  only 
Frenchmen  now.  "All  those  names  are  forenames, 
the  surname  is  Frenchman,"  Paul  Deroulede  had  said. 
"A  message  from  the  President  of  the  Republic" ;  all 
stand  again :  it  closes  with,  "Keep  we  high  our  hearts 
and  live  France!"  "Live  France!"  the  whole  House 
echoes  in  a  great  shout.  The  Prime  Minister  tells 
with  damning  baldness  the  story  of  the  negotiations 
through  which  the  enemy  step  by  step  forced  war. 
The  unanimous  vote  of  supplies.  "Vive  la  France!" 
the  House,  the  public,  the  press  representatives,  the 
Corps  Diplomatique,  are  standing  and  crying  with 
one  voice.  The  historic  4th  of  August  meeting  of 
the  French  Parliament  is  over.  The  psychology  of 
other  peoples  was  a  closed  book  to  the  powers  that 
ruled  the  German  Empire  in  1914. 

A  month  later,  day  for  day,  one  heard  from  Paris 
the  German  heavy  guns.  Think  of  the  tragedy  of  it. 
Was  it  all  over?  Was  it  to  be  a  worse  1870?  Paris 
did  not  flinch.  Civil  authorities,  banks,  financiers,  the 
Bank  of  France  with  its  gold,  citizens  unfortunately 
prominent  enough  to  be  upon  the  prepared  German 
list  of  hostages,  left  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and 
the  military  authorities  were  glad  to  be  rid  of  them. 
Paris  herself  never  had  nerves  for  a  moment.  Tauben 

6 


FRANCE 

flew  over  Paris,  dropping  bombs  that  killed  or  maimed 
women  and  children.  Paris  never  even  lost  her  good 
humor  or  her  temper.  I  was  writing  in  rooms  on  the 
boulevards  at  five  o'clock  one  afternoon  when  one  ex- 
plosion nearly  smashed  one  of  my  windows  and  an- 
other a  minute  later  nearly  smashed  another.  We 
all  ran  down-stairs  to  the  boulevards  and  stood  in  the 
middle  of  the  street  craning  our  necks  to  look  at  the 
Taube.  That  was  the  first  five-o'clock  Taube  visit, 
but  such  visits  afterward  became  a  habit.  One  said: 
"Time  for  the  Taube.  Let  us  go  down  toward  the 
Opera;  we  shall  just  see  it."  Others  went  and  sat  on 
the  Place  de  la  Concorde  of  an  afternoon,  where  there 
is  more  sky  space  for  watching  aeroplanes.  One  more 
proof  of  the  German  failure  in  psychology,  by  the  side 
of  so  many  successes  in  other  less  subtle  sciences.  The 
Tauben  "terrorizing"  Paris  only  kept  Paris  interested. 
For  weeks  they  did  not  even  excite  Paris  enough  to 
induce  the  taking  of  any  means  for  stopping  them. 
After  a  time,  Paris  suddenly  said:  "We  have  had 
enough  of  these  Tauben.  They  bore  us.  Let  them 
be  stopped."  An  aeroplane  scout  service  was  started, 
and  no  Taube  was  seen  over  Paris  again.  Why  was 
not  the  aeroplane  scout  service  started  before?  Paris 
was  too  lazy  and  the  military  authorities  of  Paris 
"had  other  and  more  important  matters  to  deal  with." 
So  much  for  "terrorizing"  Paris. 


FRANCE 
III 

The  battle  of  the  Marne,  after  Mons  and  Charleroi, 
was  a  supreme  retrieval.  General  Joffre,  Commander- 
in-Chief ,  to  his  troops  on  September  6  said :  "Now  that 
a  battle  begins  upon  which  the  fate  of  the  country 
depends,  all  must  remember  this :  the  time  is  gone  for 
looking  backward;  every  endeavor  must  be  aimed  at 
attacking  and  throwing  back  the  enemy;  troops  un- 
able to  continue  advancing  will  at  all  costs  keep  the 
ground  won,  and  must  die  rather  than  yield.  In  this 
juncture  there  can  be  no  mercy  for  any  shortcoming." 
Later  historians  may  know  the  whole  truth  about  the 
battles  of  Mons  and  Charleroi  of  August,  1914. 
They  may  determine  purposes  and  accidents,  plan  and 
chance,  luck  and  ill  luck,  achievements  and  blunders. 
To  us  now  only  some  facts  are  known.  France  had 
massed  her  forces  along  her  eastern,  not  her  north- 
eastern, frontier.  Great  Britain  had  not  yet  come 
In.  France  avoided  even  the  suspicion  of  an  intention 
to  invade  Belgium.  German  forces  hacked  their  way 
through  Belgium.  British  forces  were  landed  in 
northern  France.  Even  the  Belgian  sacrifices  at  Liege 
and  Namur  did  not  give  the  Allies  time  to  concentrate 
efficiently  on  the  Franco-Belgian  frontier.  The  Ger- 
man forces,  after  hacking  through,  swept  round  in 
a  great  circle  down  the  left  bank  of  the  Meuse.  Why 
idid  they  not  remain  on  the  right  bank  and  march 
8 


FRANCE 

down  by  Givet  through  the  Trouee  de  Stenay?  Some 
think  that  was  the  initial  German  blunder,  others  that 
the  sweep  round  through  the  broader  and  more  open 
road  was  the  better  move.  It  took  time,  but  it  found 
the  way  clear — only  too  clear.  Blunder  for  blunder; 
the  Allies  blundered  first,  and  theirs  might  have  cost 
them  Paris  and  France.  If  Belgium  had  let  the  in- 
vader through,  Paris  must  have  fallen.  The  fort- 
night's delay,  bought  by  the  life-blood  of  the  little 
country  that  might  have  held  aloof,  still  found  the 
Allies  unready  at  the  crucial  point.  France  had  not, 
for  obvious  political  reasons,  concentrated  before  at 
the  Belgian  frontier.  But  now  Great  Britain  had 
come  in  and  landed  her  forces.  Why  was  there  no 
re-concentration  there  where  the  German  flood  poured 
in  ?  Fifty  years  hence  it  will  be  known.  The  German 
flood  poured  in,  and  met  on  the  right  the  British 
force,  still  small;  on  the  left  French  territorials,  a 
fortnight  before  clerks  in  counting-houses,  sellers  in 
shops,  little  tradespeople  at  their  trades.  The  terri- 
torials, before  the  flower  of  the  German  army,  before 
the  Prussian  Guards,  broke.  Who  will  blame  them? 
The  British  troops,  trained  and  seasoned,  held  as  long 
as  one  man  against  five  can  hold.  That  was  Charleroi 
and  Mons  and  Le  Cateau.  Why  was  not  the  best 
French  strength  opposed  to  the  best  German?  Why 
were  the  British  forces  left  unsupported?  Anyhow, 
General  Von  Kluck's  army  came  on,  marching  irre- 
9 


FRANCE 

sistibly  at  thirty  and  thirty-five  miles  a  day.     Was 
it  all  up  with  Paris  and  France? 

It  seemed  so  on  September  4.  On  September  13  the 
Commander-in-Chief,  General  Joffre,  announced  to 
the  Minister  of  War :  "Our  victory  is  complete.  Our 
armies,  after  the  fights  of  September  5  to  12,  are  in 
pursuit  of  the  enemy.  We  have  gained  one  hundred 
kilometers  in  six  days'  battle."  The  most  astonishing 
counter-blow  in  perhaps  the  whole  history  of  warfare 
had  been  dealt.  The  German  forces,  rushing  on  irre- 
sistibly, were  at  Gonesse,  eight  miles  from  Paris.  They 
seemed  and  thought  themselves  irresistible.  The  Allies 
had  retired — had  literally  run — before  them.  Their 
right  (General  Von  Kluck)  turned  eastward  on  Sep- 
tember 5,  the  better  to  encompass  Paris.  On  the  sixth 
General  Joffre  ordered  the  Allied  armies'  attack.  Sud- 
denly the  German  right  discovered  an  army  (General 
Maunoury)  it  had  never  suspected.  General  Von 
Kluck  turned  round  with  admirable  skill  to  meet  it. 
He  maneuvered  magnificently  and  retreated  sixty  miles 
to  good  positions.  The  Kronprinz  on  the  German  left 
was  in  difficulties  and  retired  less  magnificently.  Gen- 
eral Joffre  had  won  the  battle  of  the  Marne.  If  Gen- 
eral Von  Kluck  had  guessed  the  existence  of  General 
Maunoury's  army  on  his  right,  he  might  have  reached 
Paris.  Had  he  not  maneuvered  so  skilfully  as  he  did 
when  he  found  out  his  blunder,  the  German  retreat 
from  the  Marne  might  have  been  the  German  rout 
10 


FRANCE 

from  France.  I  do  not  doubt  that  General  Joffre  ad- 
mires German  maneuvering  in  the  surprise  of  the 
Marne.  I  am  sure  that  German  commanders  equally 
admire  General  Joffre's  great  retrieval.  Think  of  it! 
A  retreat  from  Charleroi  to  Paris;  the  enemy  per- 
suaded he  has  nothing  of  any  count  against  him ;  a 
rush  at  thirty-five  miles  a  day  without  opposition 
through  some  of  the  richest  counties  of  France;  a 
triumphant  progress ;  Paris  is  his.  Suddenly  a  new 
army  on  his  right  he  had  never  dreamed  of ;  fighting, 
after  the  conqueror's  riotous  advance  with  wine  and 
women,  when  it  was  not  sottishness  and  rape;  retreat, 
defeat,  the  great  invasion  turned  into  a  general 
strategic  move  to  the  rear;  a  rout  prevented  only  by 
discipline  and  entrenchment.  The  raid  on  Paris  to 
September  4,  1914,  and  the  saving  of  Paris  from 
September  6  to  September  12,  1914,  will  be  spoken  of 
by  many  generations. 

"We  have  been  able  to  show  the  world  that  an  or- 
ganized democracy  can  bring  strong  action  to  the 
service  of  freedom  and  equality,  the  ideals  that  make 
it  great.  We  have  been  able  to  show  the  world  that, 
in  the  words  of  our  Commander-in-Chief,  who  is  a 
great  soldier  and  a  noble  citizen,  the  Republic  may  be 
proud  of  the  army  she  made,"  said  the  Prime  Minister 
in  Parliament  on  December  22,  1914.  The  Third 
French  Republic  has  shown  that  she  has  not  weakened 
France.  She  blundered,  she  was  blind,  she  buried  hep 
11 


FRANCE 

head  in  her  own  little  domestic  quarrels,  while  the 
Empire  next  door  was  putting  its  last  finishing  touch 
to  its  monster  war-machine.  She  has  proved  that 
with  all  her  foibles  and  faults  and  backslidings  she 
well  preserved  still  the  real  France.  Do  not  put  it 
that  at  the  instant  of  danger  the  real  France  found 
herself  in  spite,  not  because,  of  the  Republic.  If  Re- 
publican Government  had  been  capable  of  weakening 
France,  it  would  have  had  time  to  do  it  in  forty-three 
years.  Nineteen  years  of  Empire  produced  a  France 
that  was  crushed  in  a  month.  The  real  France  of 
1870-1  found  herself  only  after  the  fall  of  the  Em- 
pire, when  Gambetta  rallied  the  country  and  France 
made  such  a  stand  as  no  country  so  defeated  made 
before.  In  the  midst  of  war  the  France  of  the  Second 
Empire  fought  against  herself.  From  August  4, 
1914,  the  France  of  the  Third  Republic  stood  fast, 
with  one  front  to  the  foe. 

The  Republic  made  many  mistakes.  I  know  many 
now  old  Republicans  whom  the  war  uprooted  from 
the  doctrines  of  a  lifetime;  good  will  among  men, 
war  against  war,  the  United  States  of  Europe,  were 
blown  away  like  bubbles.  The  Republic  had  never 
been  quite  unready,  but  had  never  been  more  than 
half  ready  for  war.  Fortifications,  heavy  guns,  am- 
munition, were  only  more  or  less  prepared;  the  re- 
turn to  the  three  years'  military  service,  bringing  up 
the  first  French  fighting  line  within  measurable  dis- 


FRANCE 

tance  of  the  German,  was  passed  just  a  year  before 
the  war. 

IV 

Less  than  a  week  before  Germany  declared  war  on 
France*  there  was  no  President  of  the  Republic,  no 
Prime  Minister,  no  Foreign  Secretary  in  France.  All 
Paris,  all  France,  and  all  the  world  in  so  far  as  it 
thought  of  French  affairs,  was  wrapped  in  the  trial  of 
Madame  Caillaux  for  having  shot  dead  the  editor  of 
the  Figaro,  and  was  wondering  whether  her  husband 
would  or  would  not  prove  strong  enough  (he  did)  to 
procure  her  acquittal,  and  he  always  acknowledged 
himself  to  be  the  champion  of  Franco-German  friend- 
ship for  business  reasons.  A  pleasant,  peaceful  gen- 
tleman was  locum-tenens  at  the  Quai  d'Orsay.  M.  Vivi- 
ani  himself  (he  told  me  so  in  July,  1914)  was  still 
shy  of  handling  the  foreign  policy  of  France,  and  he 
was  away  in  Russia.  The  amiable  locum-tenens  re- 
ceived the  visit  of  Baron  von  Schoen  and  said,  of 
course,  His  Excellency  comes  to  ask  for  a  seat  for  the 
Caillaux  trial.  The  Baron  came  to  say  that  his 
Imperial  Master  had  decided  to  uphold  Austria  to  the 
utmost.  Imagine  the  state  of  mind  of  the  amiable 
locum-tenens,  perfectly  ignorant  of  the  affairs  of 

*  The  President  of  the  Republic,  with  the  Prime  Minister 
and  Foreign  Secretary  M.  Viviani,  returned  from  their  visit 
to  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  planned  long  before,  on  Wednes- 
day, July  29.  Baron  von  Schoen  intimated  Germany's  dec- 
laration of  war  on  France  on  Monday,  August  3. 

13 


FRANCE 

Europe  and  horribly  nervous  about  the  foreign  policy 
of  France. 

On  Friday,  July  81,  at  four  p.  M.,  I  called  at  the 
Austro-Hungarian  Embassy  in  Paris,  where  I  then 
had  friends.  Count  S.  told  me :  "I  am  confident  that 
an  understanding  will  be  come  to  between  us  and  Rus- 
sia." At  four-thirty  the  news  reached  Paris  that 
Germany  had  declared  the  Kriegsgefdhrzustand.  It 
is  now  clear  that  Germany  was  trying  to  lull  Russia 
with  the  suggestion  of  continued  negotiations  between 
her  and  Austria-Hungary,  and  was  indeed  communi- 
cating the  suggestion  to  Austria-Hungary  herself  at 
the  very  instant  that  Germany  was  declaring  the 
Kriegsgefdhrzustand.*  That  evening  a  widely  known 
British  pacifist  talked  to  me  earnestly  over  the  tele- 
phone, imploring  me  to  announce  that  (as  he  was  in- 
formed, and  he  knew  His  Majesty  personally)  the 
German  Emperor  was  opposed  to  war  and  had  threat- 
ened the  German  War  party  that  he  would  abdicate 
if  the  latter  persisted  in  its  aims. 

Three  days  later  Germany  declared  war  against 
France,  on  the  pretext,  which  Baron  von  Schoen,  who 
made  the  declaration  at  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  scarcely 
himself  feigned  to  believe,  that  French  aviators  had 
flown  over  Nuremberg.  In  the  interval  Germany  had 
invaded  French  territory,  invaded  Luxembourg  and 
sent  her  ultimatum  to  Belgium. 

*  British  White  Paper,  August,  1914.  Compare  Nos.  110, 
112, 113. 


FRANCE 

That  France  or  England  prepared  war  on  Germany 
is  a  grim,  a  German  joke.  On  the  Sunday  afternoon, 
August  2,  1914,  the  French  Foreign  Office  wondered 
one  thing :  would  the  violation  of  the  neutrality  of  the 
Grand  Duchy  of  Luxembourg  by  Germany,  then  just 
accomplished,  be  sufficient  to  bring  Great  Britain  in? 
Friends  at  the  Quai  d'Orsay  and  I  weighed  the  words 
of  the  treaty  guaranteeing  the  neutrality  of  Luxem- 
bourg, and  we  doubted.  That  same  day  His  Britan- 
nic Majesty's  ambassador  in  Paris  was  gaily  telling 
all  whom  he  met  that  Great  Britain  would  remain 
neutral.  Humble  subjects  of  His  Majesty  like  myself 
spent  much  less  gay  hours  and  sleepless  nights.  On 
that  Sunday  night  the  editor  of  Le  Matin  kept  me  a 
half -hour  on  the  telephone  with  despairing  appeals: 
he  had  the  worst  news  from  London;  Great  Britain 
was  standing  out  and  letting  Germany  make  the  war 
she  wanted ;  I  must  do  all  I  could,  I  must  move  heaven 
and  earth.  I  had  done  what  I  could.  The  next  day  I 
met  the  editor  at  the  Quai  d'Orsay  and  he  fell  into 
my  arms,  for  at  seven  the  evening  before  Germany 
had  sent  her  ultimatum  to  Belgium ;  England  was  by 
France's  side. 

V 

And  England  made  war  on  poor  Germany !    What 

grim  jokes  German  jokes  are!    The  French  Republic 

taken  unawares,  as  no  State  ever  was,  met  the  assault 

as  only  a  real  nation  can.     "German  diplomacy  has 

15 


FRANCE 

ceased  to  exist,"  said  friends  of  mine  at  the  Quai 
d'Orsaj,  when  Germany  sent  the  ultimatum  to  Bel- 
gium. A  few  hours  later  my  friends,  ministers  pleni- 
potentiary, secretaries  of  embassy,  were  lieutenants, 
sergeants,  privates  in  the  French  army.  A  few  days 
later  they  were  at  the  front,  and  some  are  buried 
there.  The  nation  rose  to  the  challenge  as  one  man. 
The  priest  waived  his  "Love  one  another"  and  fought 
and  was  killed.  The  Anarchist  waived  his  "Love  one 
another"  and  shot  as  many  Boches  as  he  could  and 
was  killed.  The  anti-militarist  was  the  hardest  fighter ; 
the  Royalist  Camelot  du  Roy,  propagandists  in  peace- 
time of  the  Due  d'Orleans  against  the  Republic  and 
a  thorn  in  the  side  of  Paris  politicians,  said,  "At  last 
we  can  fight  without  being  run  in";  the  Syndicalist 
trooper,  after  risking  his  life  to  save  his  lieutenant, 
whistled  the  chorus  of  I 'Internationale,  the  burthen 
of  which  is:  "And  we  keep  our  bullets  to  shoot  our 
Generals  with."  German  organization  is  remarkable, 
German  militarism  is  wonderful,  German  psychology 
is  weak.  Against  German  aggression  France  stood 
like  one  man.  The  Third  Republic  had  not  lessened, 
had  perhaps  broadened  the  French  people's  will.  Who 
thought  France  would  be  divided  against  who  at- 
tacked France  was  blind.  Who  thought  France  was 
no  longer  one  France  was  blind. 

Even   Germans   never,   I  believe,  thought   exactly 
that  France  had  forgotten  how  to  fight,  but  they  knew 
16 


FRANCE 

she  was  only  half  ready  and  they  ready  to  the  last 
gaiter  button  and  the  last  incendiary  bomb  for  setting 
houses  on  fire.  They  madly  imagined  she  was  perma- 
nently unnerved  and  had  lost  her  national  constancy ; 
they  least  of  all  dreamed  that,  of  old  a  fighter,  she 
would  put  up  as  good  a  fight  as  of  old  in  a  new  way 
and  a  way  new  to  her.  A  furiously  dashing  French 
soldier  all  the  world  knew;  one  capable  of  grimly 
holding  on  for  days,  then  weeks,  then  months,  no  one 
had  known  and  he  probably  himself  did  not  know. 
The  victory  of  the  Marne  after  the  retreat  from 
Charleroi  was  the  last  thing  the  enemy  expected  the 
French  army  capable  of.  General  Joffre  was  the  last 
sort  of  Commander-in-Chief  Germany  expected  to 
find  in  the  field:  dashing  Murats  and  Marceaus,  if 
you  will,  with  the  ghost  of  a  chance  of  a  new  Napo- 
leon; never  a  stolid,  stout,  quiet  old  gentleman  who 
slept  soundly  nine  hours  a  night,  never  turned  a  hair 
in  retreat,  never  knew  nerves,  never  fussed,  never 
doubted,  stuck  fast  where  he  wanted,  plodded  whither 
he  meant  to  plod;  a  bulldog  where  a  snappy,  quick- 
silver, short-breathed  fox  terrier  was  expected,  and  it 
was  the  German  who  turned  out  to  be  the  fox  terrier, 
biting  and  dashing  hither  and  thither  with  astonishing 
liveliness  while  the  bulldog  held  on  with  astonishing 
endurance.  French  stamina  surprised  Germany. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   LAND    AND    THE    PEOPLE 


FBANCE  is  more  one  country  and  the  French  are 
more  one  nation  than  any  other  country  or  nation 
in  Europe.  Look  first  at  the  map.  The  French 
soil  was  the  abuttal  of  the  rush  of  primeval  races 
westward.  Successive  wander  instincts  found  rest  west 
of  the  Rhine  and  of  the  Alps.  France  was  the  most 
convenient  settling  place  of  the  hordes  of  young  peo- 
ples pushed  from  the  east.  The  British  Isles  were 
cut  off,  because,  other  things  equal,  the  sea  is  the  most 
difficult  bar.  The  Spanish  peninsula  was  too  distant, 
round  the  corner  as  it  were,  and  round  the  corner 
from  the  opposite  side  Africa  protruded.  Many  peo- 
ples were  naturally  led  to  pitch  their  tents  finally  in 
France,  across  the  Rhine,  down  the  Rhone,  over  the 
sea  to  Provence.  France  drew  to  herself  more  differ- 
ent peoples  thafl  any  other  country  in  Europe.  Her 
place  on  the  map  was  like  that  of  no  other  country  in 
Europe.  She  commanded  western  Europe:  she  held 
the  Channel  against  England,  she  had  a  great  Atlantic 
seaboard,  she  spread  out  on  the  Mediterranean ;  she 
touched  northeastern  Europe  closely  by  the  Rhine 
18 


FRANCE 

and  the  Rhone,  she  touched  southeastern  Europe 
through  the  passes  of  the  Alps,  she  held  the  only  land 
routes  east  and  west  of  the  Pyrenees  to  Spain.  Geo- 
graphical France  is  the  most  favored  country  in  Eu- 
rope. To-day,  though  she  has  grossly  neglected  her 
chances  on  the  sea,  France  still  lives  by  her  place  on 
the  map.  She  ought  to  be  the  great  maritime  power 
for  trade  and  for  war  of  Europe.  She  still  is,  as  she 
was  in  the  primitive  history  of  the  westward  rush  of 
peoples,  a  privileged  country  that  links  north  with 
south,  that  looks  westward,  oceanward,  that  belongs 
eastward  to  the  continent.  She  is  a  sea  power  on  one 
side,  a  land  power  on  the  other,  a  northern  power 
here,  a  southern  power  there ;  she  is,  roughly,  a  Teu- 
tonic and  a  Latin  country,  and  she  puts  out  her  Celtic 
foreland  into  the  Atlantic. 

Diverse  by  her  position,  France  was  also  destined 
clearly  by  her  position  to  harbor  a  quickly  and  closely 
united  people.  There  is  no  land  in  Europe  at  once  so 
varied  and  so  compact.  The  British  Isles,  obviously 
less  diverse,  being  in  touch  with  only  one  corner  of 
Europe,  were  also  severed  deeply  in  their  anatomy  and 
have  been  deeply  severed  in  history  by  the  St.  George's 
Channel.  Cut  off  from  the  north,  as  the  British  Isles 
from  the  south,  the  Spanish  peninsula  was  at  the  same 
time  too  perilously  near  Africa  to  enjoy  the  long 
safety  of  abode  without  which  a  people  has  not  the 
peace  of  mind  it  needs  to  fashion  its  house  into  one 
19 


FRANCE 

home,  and  though  Spain  and  Portugal  live  together 
in  one  house  geographically  they  are  two  divided  na- 
tional homes  as  much  as  ever. 

The  Pyrenees,  the  Alps,  the  Rhine  and  her  three 
seaboards  made  France  naturally  one  land.  The  con- 
stant French  instinct  to  stretch  French  power  to  the 
Rhine  is  thus  at  all  events  good  geography.  The 
steady  and  complete  unifying  of  the  peoples  inhabit- 
ing France  was  a  necessary  consequence  in  history  of 
the  life  of  French  land.  The  constant  policy  of  cen- 
tralization which  the  French  monarchy  pursued  for 
centuries  and  at  last  achieved,  which  the  wildest  Revo- 
lutionists of  the  Terror  carried  on  without  an  instant's 
doubt  of  its  necessity,  and  which  the  Emperor,  come 
from  Corsica  to  understand  certain  French  national 
instincts  better  than  any  French  ruler  before,  brought 
to  an  iron  perfection,  is  finally  explained  by  France's 
position  on  the  map. 

n 

The  French  are  organically  one  nation,  as  France  is 
structurally  one  country.  No  people  in  Europe  is 
more  one  people.  It  is  not  a  homogeneous  people,  for 
it  is  a  greatly  varied  people,  but  it  is  a  people  organ- 
ized by  time,  by  chance,  by  instinct  and  by  conscious 
purpose  to  be  one  people.  All  the  governing  powers 
of  the  country  have  for  centuries  worked  toward  unit- 
ing the  nation.  The  chance  that  began  the  making 


Provincial  Life 


Drawn  by  Ch.  Huard 


FRANCE 

of  one  French  people  was  the  lie  of  the  land  upon 
which  wanderers  of  different  races  at  last  settled.  The 
unifying  and  centralizing  instinct  has  not  been  only 
that  of  rulers ;  the  governed  also,  in  spite  of  long  and 
stubborn  holding  out  of  kingdom  and  province 
against  absorption  by  the  Capetian  Crown,  gradu- 
ally were  drawn  out  of  the  parochial  to  a  broader 
patriotism.  But  the  unifying  of  France  has  certainly 
also  been  reasoned,  instinct  became  conscious  intuition, 
and  the  French  nation  of  deliberate  purpose  organ- 
ized itself. 

France  had  to  throw  into  the  melting-pot  (the  com- 
mon, if  uncertain  terminology  of  races  being  ac- 
cepted) as  many  Celts  as  Great  Britain,  perhaps 
nearly  as  many  Teutons  as  what  is  Germany  to-day, 
perhaps  nearly  as  many  Latins  as  what  is  Italy  to- 
day. Be  problems  of  true  racial  descent  what  they 
may,  Gauls,  Norsemen,  Franks,  Latins,  Phoenicians 
and  Basques  made  up  the  French  people,  and  for  over 
two  centuries  it  has  been,  and  to-day  it  is,  one  indis- 
soluble people,  and  no  plausible  hypothesis  of  world- 
change  foresees  for  centuries  its  dissolution.  This 
perhaps  first  of  all  should  be  considered  about  France 
and  the  French. 

The  French  have  a  national  character  to  a  greater 
extent  than  any  other  people  in  Europe.  The  political 
unity  of  France  is  easily  seen  to  be  at  least  as  com- 
plete as  that  of  any  other  country.  What  is  more 


FRANCE 

interesting  is  to  look  deeper  and  to  find  the  unity  of 
French  national  character.  Only  shallow  observers 
perceive  such  unity  to  be  greater  in  the  English  peo- 
ple ;  the  strange  and  lasting  divorce  between  the  deed 
and  the  thought,  the  facts  and  the  dreams  of  Eng- 
land, between  her  prose  and  her  poetry,  has  escaped 
them.  Between  the  German  fist  and  German  fancy, 
between  the  heavy  forcefulness  and  the  poetic  feeling 
that  Germany  has  shown  to  the  world,  is  another  and 
rather  similar,  but,  happily  for  the  English,  more 
violent  contrast.  The  fist  may  have  crushed  the  fancy, 
but  one  can  not  finally  forget  the  latter,  though  those 
who  feel  the  fist  may  be  pardoned  for  forgetting  the 
fancy,  and  one  will  not  cease  wondering  probably  as 
long  as  one  lives  that  a  people,  or  an  assemblage  of 
peoples,  which  at  one  time  sang  some  of  the  greatest 
and  most  delicate  poetry  the  world  knows  should  per- 
fect a  system  of  methodical  brutality  such  as  the 
world  never  knew  before,  that  "Ueber  alien  Gipfeln 
is  Ruli9  .  .  ."*  is  in  the  same  tongue  as  "Krieg  1st 
Krieg,"  with  which  three  words  old  men,  women  and 
children  were  shot.  If  the  poetry  of  Germany  be 
German,  and  one  supposes  it  must  be,  there  is  no 
German  national  character  but  a  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr. 
Hyde  association,  and  in  the  history  of  to-day  the 
devil  has  taken  the  hindmost. 

No  sharp  divorce  divides,  no  great  confusion  dis- 

*  But  there  is  no  Goethe  now. 
22 


FRANCE 

turbs  the  French  national  character.  Go  from  Lille 
to  Marseilles,  from  the  French  Academy  to  the  fac- 
tory, from  the  Champs  Elysees  and  millionaire  shop- 
keepers (barring  foreign  settlers)  to  Belleville  and 
its  Syndicalists.  It  is  the  same  country,  with  the  same 
spirit,  the  same  language,  almost  the  same  manners. 
The  French  speech  first  proves  to  an  outsider  the 
unity  of  the  French  people. 


Ill 


Class  distinctions  in  French  speech  are  perceptible 
to  a  foreigner  only  if  he  has  lived  years  of  French 
life.  The  newcomer  may  quite  well  take  a  shop-girl 
for  a  duchess,  judging  by  her  speech.  There  is  less 
difference  between  the  accents  of  an  academician  and 
a  navvy  in  France  than  there  is  between  those  of  a 
professional  man  and  a  tradesman  in  many  other  coun- 
tries. Provincial  accents,  dialects,  and  real  languages 
also,  like  Breton,  Provei^al,  Basque,  remain.  But 
finally,  the  Marsellais  who  sounds  all  his  syllables  as 
in  Italian,  and  the  Picard  with  the  broad,  fat  Flemish 
intonation,  have  accepted  the  same  unified  French 
tongue.  The  French  State,  with  the  general  consent 
of  the  French  nation,  does  not  foster  or  even  tolerate 
but  steadily  aims  at  obliterating  independent  lan- 
guages :  Mistral,  who  remade  Prove^al,  had  to  teach 
the  Proven9aux  how  to  read  him ;  not  a  word  of  Basque 
23 


FRANCE 

is  allowed  to  be  taught  in  the  schools  of  the  Basque 
country,  and  the  Basques  keep  up  their  ancient  and 
mysterious  tongue  only  by  teaching  it  themselves  to 
their  children ;  Breton  in  Brittany  is  not  officially  rec- 
ognized as  a  language.  With  the  single  exception  in 
the  world  probably  of  the  linguistic  marvel  of  Russia, 
where  the  illiterate  peasant  speaks  the  best  Russian, 
the  French  are  most  the  nation  of  one  language.  It 
was  not  the  language  of  all  the  French,  it  was  imposed 
upon  them  by  the  masterful  He  de  France,  the  nucleus 
round  which  all  modern  France  was  built,  and  they 
accepted  it  and  accept  its  canons,  its  laws,  its  style. 
There  are  no  two  opinions  on  any  rule  of  French 
grammar,  and  there  are  many  provincial  French  acad- 
emies, but  only  one  French  Academy,  which  many 
writers  pretend  to  laugh  at,  but  all  finally  bow  to. 

From  Lille  to  Marseilles,  from  Brest  to  Bordeaux, 
there  is  a  unity  of  manners,  a  unity  in  the  way  of 
living  and  looking  at  life,  completer  than  in  other 
nations.  He  who  first  spoke  of  "the  pleasant  land 
of  France"  saw  that.  He  saw,  almost  everywhere, 
in  rich  Touraine,  in  frugal  Auvergne,  that  genial 
acceptance  of  things  as  they  are.  A  bright  face  to 
all  weathers,  a  kindly  face  to  the  foreigner,  a  certain 
inbred  polish  and  pleasant  easy  way  with  men  and 
things.  On  the  outside,  an  agreeable  demeanor  to- 
ward whomsoever  met  or  whatever  happens;  nothing 
harsh  or  stiff  in  behavior  or  philosophy.  One  peo- 
£4 


FRANCE 

pie  long  versed  in  the  art  of  savoir-vivre,  knowing 
how  to  live  and  let  live,  old  in  culture,  old  especially 
in  social  culture,  in  the  art  of  rounding  off  corners 
that  men  may  rub  with  one  another  more  comfortably. 
Beneath  the  surface  a  corresponding  philosophy:  a 
determination  not  to  quarrel  with  life,  but  to  make 
the  best  of  it,  to  show  a  cheerful  face  to  fate  as  to 
the  things  of  every  day;  but  no  jocose  devil-may-care 
jauntiness  that  snaps  its  fingers,  nothing  whatever 
of  a  sort  of  Bohemianism  that  is  sometimes  supposed 
to  be  French;  on  the  contrary,  an  earnest,  almost  a 
deadly  earnest  intention  to  make  the  best  of  things, 
a  set  purpose  to  get  as  much  out  of  life  as  can  be 
got,  a  persistent  realism,  perhaps  with  subconscious 
roots  in  an  instinct  to  clutch  at  what  is,  for  fear  what 
might  be  would  be  worse,  and  in  a  belief  that  life 
must  be  made  the  best  of  because  there  is  nothing 
else. 

The  pleasant  land  of  France  hides  a  deep  ruthless 
realism  beneath  its  amenities,  and  its  philosophy, 
which  tries  to  make  life  as  agreeable  as  may  be  on 
the  surface,  is  grave,  sometimes  bitter,  beneath.  The 
silent  peasant  of  the  North,  the  chattering  south- 
erner in  his  second-rate  vineyards,  the  solemn,  priest- 
like  vintner  of  the  great  Me"doc,  the  bullet-headed 
Auvergnat;  the  little  bourgeois,  the  big  bourgeois, 
the  striving  little  shopkeeper,  the  man  of  big  under- 
takings: they  are  all  realists,  they  all  have  a  great 
25 


FRANCE 

faith  in  life,  perhaps  a  rather  dry,  hard,  too  shrewd 
faith,  but  because  of  it  they  anyhow  try  to  make  life 
more,  not  less,  worth  living.  Perhaps  the  Bretons, 
who  must  dream,  and  the  Basques,  whose  mysterious 
race  has  kept  to  itself,  will  have  to  be  left  out  (though 
the  Bretons  are  being  more  and  more  assimilated  to 
France),*  but  for  the  rest,  all  over  France  every 
Frenchman  thinks  the  particular  polished,  intelligent, 
dry,  refined,  pleasant,  stern  French  realism  the  only 
natural  way  of  looking  at  things. 

In  two  words  there  is  a  "French  spirit."  It  has 
no  equivalent  as  real  in  other  peoples.  It  is  not  only 
a  real  thing,  but  it  is  really  conceived  by  the  French 
people.  Others  not  only  have  not  found  themselves 
so  completely,  but  have  not  looked  for  themselves  so 
clear-sightedly.  "L'esprit  franfais"  is  a  philosophic 
entity  in  France.  In  the  arts  and  in  philosophy  it 
has  been  conscious  and  deliberate ;  in  the  ways  of  life 
it  is  instinctive  and  no  less  strong.  French  thought 
always  assumes  the  French  spirit  to  be  one  of  the  in- 
tellectual facts  of  the  world  and  not  seldom  considers 
it  the  world's  intellectual  standard.  French  life  not 
only  acts  half  consciously  up  to  the  French  standard, 
but  when  it  turns  round  and  reflects  upon  itself,  ac- 
knowledges that  it  so  acts  and  that  there  is  a  French 

*  The  "Blues"  of  Brittany  are  the  Republicans,  gradually 
gaining  ground  over  the  "Whites,"  the  old  Royalists,  and 
Brest,  moreover,  is  a  Socialist  center.  But  Breton  Republi- 
cans and  Socialists  are  Bretons  still. 


FRANCE 

spirit  guiding  it.  I  doubt  whether,  since  the  Athenian 
or  the  Roman,  any  such  complete  national  spirit  has 
existed.  German  Imperial  thinking  is  a  thing  of  yes- 
terday, and  there  is  no  correspondence  between  it  and 
the  German  thought  that  has  counted  in  the  world. 
It  is  difficult  to  find  a  common  German  spirit  among 
the  real  German  thinkers,  seers  and  singers  that  the 
world  has  listened  to,  and  impossible  to  find  among 
them  a  common  character  that  can  be  called  that  of 
the  modern  German  Empire.*  Russian  thought  ex- 
pressed in  art  has  been  intensely  national  in  spirit, 
but  political  and  diplomatic  Russia  is  entirely  divorced 
from  the  rest  of  Russia,  and  there  are  many  Russias, 
of  which  one  knows  some  and  guesses  at  others,  the 
Russia  of  literature,  the  Russia  of  European  and 
Asiatic  politics,  the  Russia  of  the  soil  which  may  be 
the  same  as  the  first,  but  there  is  no  one  Russia  that 
the  rest  of  the  world  knows.  The  modern  Italian 
spirit  is  a  thing  of  an  even  more  recent  yesterday, 
in  spite  of  dates,  than  the  German  Imperial  spirit, 
and  is  still  a  far  less  real  spirit  than  that  of  the  Ital- 
ian Renaissance.  Italy  found  herself  better,  in  the 
things  that  really  matter  for  the  world,  when  a  dozen 
alien  armies  overran  her  and  she  was  a  wild  fox  at 
bay  fighting,  than  since  the  modern  day  of  her  unity. 

*  Since  that  became  mere  militarism,  German  guns,  not 
German  thought,  were  the  only  German  thing  the  world 
knew,  and  Germany,  too.  A  common  character  of  militar- 
ism is  not  a  common  character  of  any  thinkers,  but  a  com- 
mon abdication. 

27 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  FRENCH  SPIBIT 


THE  French  spirit,  considered  as  a  national  and 
political  spirit,  is  a  passion  for  national  unity.  In 
history  the  fact  stands  out  that  the  He  de  France 
eventually  absorbed  Burgundy  and  Languedoc,  Nor- 
mandy and  Provence.  All  became  French  and  are 
French  to-day.  Nice,  joined  centuries  later,  is  French 
to-day.  Brittany  is  almost  French  to-day.  Metz, 
Strasbourg,  Mulhouse,  become  politically  German  in 
1871,  were  French  still  forty-three  years  after.  Speak 
German  there  and  you  were  a  stranger  and  "bad 
form";  speak  French,  in  shop  or  cafe,  and  you  were 
welcome  and  a  person  "who  knows  how  to  live."  Yet, 
what  is  French?  What  made  the  French?  What 
are  the  French  by  descent  that  they  should  overbear- 
ingly be  French?  The  historical  reply  only  is  the  tru- 
ism that  several  races,  several  civilizations,  several 
climes  joined  to  form  among  them  a  French  national 
and  political  spirit. 

The  crystallization  of  countries  round  the  He  de 
France  has  been  a  remarkable  fact  in  history.  It 
was  not  only  a  process  of  geographical  chemistry.  It 
28 


FRANCE 

was  psychological :  the  He  de  France  became  the  will 
and  the  mind,  and  by  further-sighted  power  took  the 
command.  Hence  the  French  spirit,  which  at  the 
beginning  was  implied  in  the  map  of  France.  Half- 
baked  France  was  torn  by  civil  wars,  by  the  Fronde, 
by  the  wars  of  religion.  They  did  not  matter  for  the 
one  France.  She  lost  by  casting  out  some  of  the  Hu- 
guenots ;  no  matter,  she  was  becoming  the  one  France. 
A  century  or  two  later  and  the  Huguenots  remaining 
at  Montpellier — Huguenots  as  ever  there  were — were, 
if  not  French  first  and  Huguenots  after,  at  least 
doubtful  at  the  pinch  which  they  were  first.  To-day, 
in  the  south  the  Huguenot  is  Huguenot  still,  and  he 
and  the  Roman  Catholic  would  knife  each  other  in 
times  of  excitement,  but  each  would  call  the  other  a 
bad  Frenchman  for  an  insult.  The  first  French  Rev- 
olution tore  up  France:  from  the  Girondins  to  the 
Terror  it  always  obeyed  the  French  political  spirit. 
Robespierre  worshiping  the  Goddess  Reason  and 
Fouquier-Tinville  condemning  prisoners  without  a 
hearing  in  the  name  of  the  higher  cause  of  the  Father- 
land, were  only  exaggerations  of  the  French  charac- 
ter: they  were  not  at  all  foreign  to  the  French  po- 
litical and  national  spirit.  Though  the  Revolution 
had  the  Chouans  to  fight,  it  was  still  representatively 
French ;  it  represented  France  much  more  than  is  often 
understood.  It  was  the  French  spirit  at  a  paroxysm, 
French  thought  exasperated,  French  reason  reduced 


FRANCE 

to  the  absurd.  Napoleon  came:  the  French  passion 
for  unity  was  satisfied  at  last.  He  astoundingly  un- 
derstood France — not  all  France,  but  a  big  part  of 
it,  at  least  the  French  political  spirit.  It  was  one 
of  the  amazing  facts  of  history  that  he  was  identified 
with  France.  He  led  armies  made  up  of  a  dozen  na- 
tions, and  it  was  France  that  won.  He  fell,  and  it 
was  France  that  fell.  He  understood  the  French  na- 
tional passion  for  unity,  and  with  the  counselors  cho- 
sen and  imperiously  guided  by  him  planned  the  or- 
ganization of  France  that  lasts  to  this  day. 

The  French  political  spirit  thus  has  persisted 
through  extraordinary  vicissitudes.  The  Terror 
strengthened  it,  a  Corsican  adventurer,  by  providential 
chance,  kept  it  up.  The  gentle  Revolution  of  1848, 
the  placid  Second  Empire,  the  short  and  sharp  Com- 
mune, the  Third  Republic,  confirmed  it. 


n 


To-day  French  political  unity  is  a  pattern  for  so- 
cial organisms  aiming  at  unity.  The  purpose  and 
causes  of  French  political  centralization  are  seldom 
well  understood.  It  is  not  by  chance  that  the  French 
social  fabric  has  been  steadily  and  rigorously  cen- 
tralized, nor  has  extreme  centralization  been  merely 
the  device  of  rulers  for  ruling  more  easily  and  more 
strongly,  were  the  rulers  the  Convention  of  the  First 
SO 


FRANCE 

Revolution,  Napoleon  I,  Napoleon  III,  or  the  political 
caucuses  of  the  Third  Republic.  The  system  indeed 
came  in  handy  for  every  ruling  power,  and  each  one 
in  France  has  in  turn  used  and  strengthened  it.  The 
French  statesman  out  of  power  talks  of  decentraliza- 
tion, giving  freer  play  to  the  limbs  and  relieving  the 
head.  In  power  he  does  as  his  predecessors  did,  and 
M.  Clemenceau  in  office  was  the  most  iron-handed  of 
Prime  Ministers  and  Home  Secretaries,  wielding  with 
a  stringent  arm  all  the  array  of  weapons  which  the 
elaborate  machinery  of  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior 
placed  at  his  command  throughout  French  territory 
and  upon  which  he  had  called  down  the  indignation 
of  all  honest  lovers  of  freedom  during  the  long  years 
he  was  wrecking  Cabinets,  not  captaining  one.  But 
French  centralization  is  neither  an  accident  nor  the 
product  of  domineering  ambitions.  It  is  mainly  a 
natural  growth  and  it  is  in  the  main  accepted  as  nat- 
ural by  the  French  people. 

The  French  political  mind  has  a  passion  for  logic, 
regularity,  symmetry  and  coherence  in  the  arrange- 
ment of  the  social  fabric.  It  takes  eagerly  to  the  tale 
of  the  Belly  and  the  Members,  to  the  neat  theory  that 
a  People  is  an  organic  body  like  the  human  body 
and  that  it  can  live  well  only  by  carrying  out  the 
analogy.  An  efficient  action  must  be  directed  from 
the  head;  in  the  body  politic  the  men  at  the  head  see 
furthest,  and  if  a  thing  is  to  be  done  well  it  must 
SI 


FRANCE 

be  done  from  the  top,  from  the  beginning,  and  all 
round.  Therefore  it  would  be  absurd  to  pay  much 
attention  to  lower  standpoints,  narrower  views,  local 
interests.  The  man  with  the  broadest  view  knows  best ; 
he  knows  what  is  good  for  the  smaller  horizons  better 
than  they  know  themselves.  The  portion  of  fallacy 
contained  in  the  tale  of  the  Belly  and  the  Members 
is  little  considered  by  the  French  political  mind.  The 
latter  tends  to  build  up  a  loose  analogy  into  a  strict 
system  and  to  waive  objections  and  questions.  Will 
it  be  all  gain  for  all  the  parts  of  a  people  that  the 
people  be  dealt  with  rigorously  as  one  single  body 
politic,  in  which  all  the  organs  are  wholly  interdepend- 
ent and  all  are  subordinate  to  the  controlling  brain, 
if  any  such  ideal  of  organization  be  realizable  ?  Mod- 
ern physiology  does  not  look  upon  the  human  body 
as  a  strictly  hierarchical  system  of  forces  and  finds 
much  relative  independence  in  many  of  these.  In  the 
body  politic  may  there  not  also  be  some  virtue  in 
some  looseness  of  organization  and  even  in  some  strain 
of  anarchy,  in  the  real  sense  of  the  word  ?  The  French 
political  mind  will  almost  never  think  so,  but  will  think 
it  only  rational,  natural  and  right  to  proceed  from  the- 
ory to  fact,  from  general  plan  to  particulars.  Hence 
most  of  the  elaborate  machinery  of  the  French  social 
fabric:  the  Home  Office,  controlling  or  overseeing  by 
direct  telephone  wires  from  the  Place  Beauvau  in 
Paris  every  working  of  the  country's  administration, 


FRANCE 

through  prefects  and  subprefects,  who,  ever  present 
deputies  of  the  central  authority,  are  ever  watching 
councils  general  and  municipal  councils,  ever  ready  to 
report  an  "illegal  political  resolution"  of  the  former, 
to  recommend  the  dismissal  by  the  Minister  of  a  mayor 
from  the  office  to  which  he  has  been  elected  by  his  fel- 
low villagers ;  the  Public  Roads  and  Bridges  Govern- 
ment Department  superintending  with  a  proportionate 
measure  of  authority  the  carefully  classified  roads  of 
France,  classified  by  a  rule  that  suffers  not  one  ex- 
ception, from  rural  and  "vicinal"  to  national  roads, 
with  "departmental"  roads  and  roads  "of  broad  com- 
munication" in  between;  the  Ministry  of  Public  In- 
struction, a  former  chief  of  which  is  still  remembered 
as  having  said  proudly,  taking  out  his  watch,  "At  this 
moment  every  boy  in  every  Government  school  of 
France  has  been  put  to  his  Latin  prose." 

I  have  elsewhere*  tried  to  describe  the  sharp  con- 
trast between  English  and  French  methods  of  national 
organization,  between  the  English  and  the  French  po- 
litical spirit.  I  am  not  concerned  here  with  the  draw- 
backs or  advantages  of  either  method.  The  point  to 
bear  in  mind  is  the  great  strength,  persistence  and  vi- 
tality of  the  French  political  spirit.  It  is  perfectly 
honest  to  itself  and  in  its  belief,  call  it  principle  or  bias 
as  you  will.  Almost  all  French  political  thinkers,  for 
instance,  sincerely  deplore,  for  America's  sake,  the  loose 

*  The  French  and  the  English,  London,  1913. 
33 


FRANCE 

organization  of  the  United  States,  considered  as  one 
body  politic,  urge  centralization  and  hold  that  the 
United  States'  destiny  in  the  world  must  compel  them 
eventually  toward  a  more  closely  knit  fabric,  toward 
an  hierarchical,  disciplined,  coordinate  and  single  or- 
ganism. The  French  political  spirit  is  perfectly  hon- 
est in  its  dealings  with  French  colonies,  to  which  it 
allows  not  a  vestige  of  self-government,  but  in  many 
cases  representation  in  the  Parliament  of  the  metrop- 
olis, a  measure  Great  Britain  has  scarcely  thought  of ; 
in  the  same  way  at  home  it  has  been  perfectly  honest 
in  its  persistent  increase  of  centralization  through  the 
vicissitudes  of  half  a  dozen  different  and  conflicting 
forms  of  government  during  the  modern  history  of 
France.  The  French  political  spirit  is  a  passion  for 
unity. 

m 

To-day  France  is  as  determined  as  ever  to  be  one 
nation,  and  more  than  ever  is  one  nation.  The  French 
political  spirit  is  as  vigorous  as  ever.  There  is  no 
sign  of  the  disintegration  of  the  French  nation. 
Neither  the  falling  birth-rate  nor  the  correspondingly 
enormous  alien  immigration  seems  to  make  the  French 
less  French. 

The  French  spirit  has  a  strange  and  perhaps  unique 
absorbent  power.  The  French  mind  has  probably  in- 
fluenced the  world  more  deeply  than  any  other  na- 


FRANCE 

tional  mind,  though  French  material  power  has  spread 
little.  English  influence  has  been  spread  by  English 
facts  more  than  by  English  ideas;  France  has,  with 
astonishingly  little  deed,  astonishingly  affected  the 
world  by  her  thought.  The  other  way  round,  she  ac- 
cepts much  foreign  vitality,  but  it  does  not  change 
her  ways  of  thinking.  She  absorbs  foreigners  more 
completely  than  any  other  nation.  The  United  States 
does  not  make  a  Pole  an  American  so  quickly  as 
France  makes  a  Frenchman  of  him.  Patriotic  French 
tubthumpers  cry  against  alien  immigration,  but  aliens 
receive  the  French  imprint  very  soon  and  extraordi- 
narily deeply.  The  Polish  Jew  in  Whitechapel  may 
remain  an  alien  all  his  life — and  his  children  remain 
alien  after  him.  Even  Jews  become  almost  essentially 
French,  and  an  American  Jew  is  less  American  than 
a  French  Jew  is  French.  The  tubthumper's  bugbears 
of  Semitic  and  alien  invasion  are  not  more  real,  one 
than  the  other  in  France.  The  real  French  patriot 
recognizes  the  amazing  French  power  of  putting  the 
French  stamp  once  for  all  upon  an  alien  mind.  I 
have  met  a  Greek  lemon  merchant  who  had  hardly 
enough  English  to  explain  that  he  was  one  and  who 
told  us  all  on  board  emphatically  that  he  was  a  cit- 
izen of  the  United  States.  But  I  have  met  Russians, 
Italians,  Danes,  even  English  people  in  Paris,  who 
were  more  French  than  the  French.  The  French  mind 
had  bewitched  them  and  changed  them.  Who  ever 
85 


FRANCE 

heard  of  a  Frenchman  in  London  whom  the  English 
mind  had  bewitched?  French  Canadians  are  more 
French  than  the  French  of  to-day — French  of  the 
days  of  Louis  Quinze.  The  falling  birth-rate  in 
France  is  thus  a  less  important  question  than  hyp- 
notized statisticians  imagine.  As  long  as  the  French 
keep  the  power  to  stamp  the  foreigner  who  settles  in 
their  midst  in  their  own  image,  the  French  may  bear 
fewer  children,  but  they  will  adopt  and  shape  those 
of  others  to  the  French  fashion,  and  they  will  remain 
French  as  before.  The  French  national  spirit  is  per- 
haps the  most  overweening  spirit  in  the  \Vorld. 

Alsatia — German  in  great  part  by  race  and  almost 
wholly  by  language — remained  doggedly  French  in 
spirit,  notwithstanding  all  that  German  police  domina- 
tion could  do,  because  Alsatia  had  been  French.  The 
French  imprint  upon  Alsatia  had  been  originally  a 
foreign  one:  once  stamped  it  was  never  forgotten, 
and  what  Germans  could  with  historical  logic  claim 
to  be  a  return  to  German  rule  never  effaced  it.  The 
paradox  was  seen  of  the  people  of  Miihlhausen,  which 
is  a  German  name  that  means  something,  persisting 
in  calling  themselves  the  people  of  Mulhouse,  which 
in  French  is  a  couple  of  meaningless  syllables.  The 
paradox  went  further:  Alsatians  (when  German  po- 
licemen were  out  of  hearing)  prayed  in  German  to 
be  French  again  and  in  German  called  themselves 
French  at  heart,  not  knowing  and  never  having  known 

36 


FRANCE 

any  other  tongue  but  German  and  the  Alsatian  dia- 
lect. All  because  they  had  once  been  French.  There 
is  probably  no  more  astonishing  example  of  the  moral 
and  intellectual  imprint  of  a  people  which  all  the 
material  might  of  a  materially  mighty  other  people 
never  succeeded  in  effacing.  That  the  German  fist 
never  drove  the  French  spirit  out  of  Alsace  is  the  most 
galling  confession  of  weakness  for  the  German  fist 
and  the  most  flattering  tribute  to  the  French  spirit. 


IV 


The  social  and  economic  character  of  the  French 
people  is  of  a  piece  with  its  political  and  national 
spirit,  as  was  to  be  expected  in  a  logical  people.  The 
instinct  of  racial  preservation  is  probably  stronger 
among  the  French  than  in  any  other  nation.  They 
are  jealous  of  their  national  character  and  keep  it 
more  faithfully  than  the  Jews  or  the  Chinese;  they 
were  called  the  Chinese  of  Europe  by  Bjornstjern 
Bjornson.  The  Jew  remains  a  Jew  through  the  cen- 
turies. Yet  in  spite  of  all  that  Anti-Semites  say, 
what  in  the  modern  history  of  the  Jews  most  strikes 
the  unbiased  observer  is  not  how  little,  but  relatively 
how  much,  they  have  been  assimilated  by  the  peoples 
among  whom  they  have  settled  and  have  assimilated 
their  characteristics.  About  an  English,  a  German,  a 
French  Rothschild,  what  surprises  any  student  but  an 
87 


FRANCE 

Anti-Semite  is  not  how  Jewish  he  has  remained,  but, 
all  things  considered,  how  English,  how  German,  espe- 
cially how  French  he  has  become.  The  Jew  is  the 
obvious  type  of  persistent  national  character.  Yet 
even  the  Jew,  at  least  the  successful  Jew,  keeps  his 
national  character  less  in  any  country  than  the  French- 
man settled  anywhere  outside  his  own  country.  The 
Jew  in  Anglo-Saxondom  remains  more  or  less  of  a 
Jew ;  but  he  is  less  Jewish  than  the  French  Canadian 
is  French  and  more  of  an  Anglo-Saxon  than  the 
French  Canadian  is  Anglo-Saxon. 

The  deep  French  instinct  of  self-preservation  shows 
itself  in  its  social  and  economic  arrangements.  It  is 
clear  that  small  ownership  of  land,  capital  and  all 
forms  of  property  must  make  for  conservatism  much 
more  than  latifundia  trusts  and  large  capitalism.  It 
is  not  merely  because  France  to-day  has  no  surplus 
population  that  there  are  no  French  emigrants.  The 
peasant  who  owns  his  field  and  his  farm,  who  came 
into  them  as  his  equal  share  of  his  father's  and  moth- 
er's goods,  to  whom  his  wife  brought  probably  another 
field  and  another  farm  from  her  parents,  and  who  will 
leave,  if  he  can  manage  it,  an  improved  heritage  to 
his  two  or  three  children,  is  the  last  man  in  Europe 
to  dream  of  emigrating.  The  French  town  artisan, 
though  a  wage  earner,  is  of  the  stuff  of  which  small 
capitalists  are  made.  He  may  have  yet  no  capital  him- 
self or  may  have  lost  the  little  he  had ;  he  will  be  a  very 
38 


A  Provincial  Market 


F 

Drawn  by  Ch.  Htiard 


FRANCE 

rare  French  laborer  if  he  has  not  a  father  or  an  uncle 
or  a  cousin,  or  a  cousin  of  his  wife,  with  a  small  cap- 
ital, a  small  stake  in  the  nation's  wealth  and  probably 
in  the  people's  soil.  He  almost  certainly  has  "expecta- 
tions"— a  thousand  francs  or  so — and  almost  certainly 
means  himself  not  to  reach  old  age  without  having 
become  a  capitalist. 

Almost  every  Frenchman,  including  the  Socialist 
navvy,  feels  that  the  natural  and  right  thing  is  for 
him  to  own  a  mite  of  the  nation's  saved  wealth,  and 
saves  that  he  may  own  that  mite.  Thus  he  feels  that 
he  belongs  really  to  France,  as  a  portion  of  France 
belongs  to  him.  The  instinctive  judgment  that  he 
who  owns  nothing,  even  though  living  well  on  wages 
from  day  to  day,  is  a  straw  on  the  waves,  a  floating 
thing  without  a  tie  to  any  solid  earth,  is  almost  uni- 
versal among  the  humblest  French  people,  badly  paid 
clerks,  day  laborers,  unskilled  workmen,  servant  girls. 
The  occasional  flares  and  explosions  of  French  labor 
unrest  are  vivid  and  violent;  they  are  always  dis- 
counted, in  the  observer's  eye,  by  the  fact  that  the 
Socialist  has  some  hundreds  invested  in  rentes  and 
the  Anarchist  a  freehold  cottage  in  his  native  village. 
The  French  bourgeoisie  is  of  course  the  type  of  a 
class  in  which  the  instinct  of  social  preservation  is 
strongest.  It  has  changed  in  modern  times,  it  spends 
its  money  more,  it  amuses  itself  more;  but  its  habits 
of  business,  its  ways  of  living,  its  marriages,  its  do- 
39 


FRANCE 

mestic  economy  remain  the  example  still  of  a  human 
group  intently  bent  on  self -preservation. 


I  come  to  the  French  intellectual  spirit,  to  the  spirit 
of  the  French  people  in  thought  for  thought's  sake: 
a  higher  and  deeper,  even  a  startling  subject  when 
approached.  I  think  that  there  is  a  specifically 
French  mind  more  than  there  is  any  other  specifically 
national  mind.  The  French  intellectual  spirit  is  a 
distinctive  and  characteristic  one  in  speculation,  in  art, 
even  in  science  and  especially  in  the  science  of  living. 

That  in  pure  thought  the  French  have  almost  al- 
ways been  builders,  will  surprise  the  superficial  ob- 
server who  has  always  called  them  destroyers.  Vol- 
taire, Diderot,  the  encyclopedlstes  sapped  religion, 
but  they  might  not,  if  pushed  to  it,  have  gone  out 
of  their  way  to  stop  an  enemy  of  reason  from  being 
burned  at  the  stake.  There  have  been  in  the  past  al- 
most no  French  mystics.  The  French  mind  builds 
solidly  on  reason.  There  has  been  no  broad  current 
of  mysticism  in  French  thought  since  the  Middle  Ages. 
There  was  a  mystic  fashion  in  a  small  set  of  thinkers 
in  the  last  twenty  years  of  the  nineteenth  century; 
it  passed  and  by  what  was  really  not  an  unexpected 
process  the  revival  of  dogmatic  and  orthodox  Roman 
40 


FRANCE 

Catholicism  among  the  younger  intellectual  genera- 
tion at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  coin- 
cided with  the  passing  of  the  mystic  fashion.  French 
philosophic  thought  has  seldom  trusted  to  revelation 
in  the  search  for  truth  and  seldom  preferred  the  di- 
rect perception  of  the  absolute,  which  is  the  principle 
of  mysticism.  Existence  was  a  continuous  miracle 
for  Malebranche,  but  he  reasoned  very  reasonably  and 
humanly  about  it.  In  philosophy  a  French  Novalis, 
in  philosophy  or  in  poetry  a  French  William  Blake, 
are  hardly  thinkable.  Almost  all  French  philosophy 
has  posited  human  reason — by  which  unconsciously 
it  meant  just  human  life — first,  before  beginning 
speculation. 

French  philosophy  has  built,  not  destroyed;  not, 
if  you  will,  built  high  into  the  air  like  the  skylark 
drunk  with  its  own  song  at  the  zenith,  but  like  the 
beaver,  solidly,  serviceably  and  close  to  the  ground. 
All  representative  French  philosophy  has  been  human 
first  of  all:  it  will  be  easily  seen  to  have  been  not 
the  accelerator  on  the  engine,  but  the  brake  on  the 
wheel.  It  is  the  mystics  who  upheave  human  thought, 
not  the  human  thinkers  with  feet  of  clay.  On  this 
earth  also,  French  philosophy  has  set,  not  upset,  bal- 
ance. Bacon,  Hume,  Locke,  Darwin  were  greater  rev- 
olutionists really  than  the  Girondins  and  Jacobins  of 
the  First  French  Revolution.  What  was  the  sapping 
41 


FRANCE 

of  the  Christian  religion  compared  with  the  invention 
of  Induction,  the  destruction  of  innate  ideas,  the  dis- 
covery of  evolution  ?  A  squib  to  a  bombshell. 

French  deeds  have  been  much  more  revolutionary 
than  French  thought.  French  philosophy  has  never 
forsaken  the  methods  of  deduction  or  belief  in  innate 
ideas,  still  a  favorite  faith  at  the  Sorbonne  to-day. 
It  invariably  keeps  the  balance,  and  the  proper  trust 
in  human  reason.  Were  all  other  philosophies  finally 
to  reduce  our  judgments  to  the  product  of  physical 
feelings  complicated  through  evolution — that  roughly 
has  been  the  lesson  of  English  philosophy — it  would 
still  (in  spite  of  Condillac,  who  counts  little)  hold 
up  the  relative  absolute  of  human  reason  for  our  guid- 
ance and  our  admiration.  No  mysticism  has  led  it 
to  hold  that  there  is  any  other  proper  standard  for 
man's  thought  than  man's  mind;  no  relativist,  no  as- 
sociationist,  no  evolutionist  theory  has  led  it  to  hold 
that  as  far  as  man  is  concerned  man's  reason  is  not 
absolute.  A  very  safe  faith  for  man.  A  safe  faith 
for  man  is  the  very  aim  of  French  thought.  Descartes 
was  perhaps  the  most  representative  French  mind  in 
philosophy.  To-day  and  probably  always  almost 
every  Frenchman  is  a  Cartesian  at  heart.  Pascal,  the 
mystic?  His  famous  and  tragic  vision,  the  abyss 
often  open  before  him,  was  mystical.  But  his  Chris- 
tianity is  the  type  of  rigid  and  logical  faiths.  His 
very  literary  style  is  beautifully  clear  reason.  A  mys- 
4* 


FRANCE 

tic?  He  was,  but  he  kept  his  mysticism  down  with 
an  iron  hand.  That  was  typical  of  the  French  intel- 
lectual spirit :  we  are  human,  and  it  is  wrong  and  fool- 
ish to  take  aught  but  human  reason  for  our  guide. 


VI 


In  literary  art  the  French  mind  has  been  particu- 
larly itself.  In  the  other  arts  it  has  well  given  its 
share  of  beauty  and  pleasure  to  the  world,  but  it  has 
not  been  essentially  and  exclusively  French.  Great 
French  painters,  sculptors,  musicians,  architects,  dec- 
orators have  not  been  so  peculiarly  French  as  the  lit- 
erary artists  of  France.  In  these  the  French  spirit 
is  strongest  and  most  self-willed.  Save  for  the  herit- 
age of  Greek  and  Roman  art  common  to  all  modern 
peoples,  and  passing  influences  from  Italy  and  Spain, 
the  French  literary  art  is  self-made.  It  has  not 
dreamed  of  going  outside  the  French  mind.  Pope  is 
un-English,  Heine  anti-German.  What  French  artist 
in  words  is  un-French? 

Not  only  is  French  literature  essentially  French: 
the  French  mind  has  expressed  itself  in  its  literature 
more  wholly  than  any  other  national  mind.  Written 
French  by  itself  shows  the  people's  stamp.  Buffon's 
"Le  style  c'est  Vhomme  meme"  might,  if  Buffon  had 
looked  at  his  own  nation  from  the  outside  (which  no 
Frenchman  ever  did),  have  been:  "Style  in  FrencK 
43 


FRANCE 

is  the  very  French  nation."  In  prose  and  in  poetry 
the  French  language  is  indeed  the  image  of  the  French 
mind.  No  such  wild  divorce  as  between  a  Shelley, 
a  Blake  and  the  average  English  national  mind :  flam- 
boyant Baudelaire  and  tender,  perverse,  exquisite  Ver- 
laine  wrote  the  right,  the  downright  French  tongue, 
the  language  that  agrees  so  admirably  with  French 
thought.  The  splendid  pathos  of  Lamartine  and  the 
splendid  gloom  of  Vigny  have  the  neat,  sharp  French 
form.  Moliere  puts  exactly  natural  talk  without  an 
apparent  effort  into  regular  French  verse.  Racine 
into  almost  identically  the  same  French  verse  (there 
is  no  English  Moliere  and  no  English  Racine,  but 
fancy  Dickens  and  Meredith  writing  in  verse  of  iden- 
tically the  same  meter)  puts  subtle  sentiment.  This 
same  easy,  cool  adaptable  French  verse,  capable  alike 
of  realism,  humor,  delicate  feeling  and  some  poetry, 
is  an  image  of  the  French  mind.  French  prose  has 
the  selfsame  qualities  as  French  verse :  it  is  clear,  pre- 
cise, subtle  and  definite.  That  French  verse  and 
French  prose  have  the  same  qualities  gives  one  a  key 
to  the  French  mind.  French  thought,  like  French 
style,  has  all  the  virtues  of  reason,  it  has  not  unrea- 
sonable virtues.  It  is  supremely  human;  it  is  not 
more  than  human.  The  French  literary  art  has 
reached  the  highest  prose,  in  verse  as  well  as  in  prose ; 
it  has  not  often  gone  over  the  border,  into  the  mys- 
terious and  unearthly  land  of  poetry,  and  it  has  never 
44 


FRANCE 

gone  so  far  in  that  magic  country  as  other  literary 
arts,  such  as  the  English,  so  much  less  accomplished 
in  the  works  of  prose.  It  tallies  completely  with  the 
French  spirit,  incomparably  alive  to  all  human  things, 
shrinking  from  any  more  than  human,  and  inclined 
to  call  such  less  than  human;  incomparable  in  the 
finite,  cowardly  before  the  infinite. 


vn 


Though  no  human  thought  is  less  national  than 
scientific  thought,  it  would  be  possible  and  interesting 
for  a  man  of  science  to  study  what  is  specifically 
French  in  French  science:  the  leaning,  as  in  philo- 
sophic speculation,  toward  deduction  rather  than  in- 
duction, the  strong  mathematical  turn  of  mind,  the 
strong  repugnance  for  interpreting  the  world  other- 
wise than  in  the  sole  forms  of  intelligence.  But  it  is 
the  French  science  of  living  that  is  peculiarly  French. 
No  people  knows  so  well  how  to  live,  how  it  wants  to 
live  and  how  to  live  in  the  way  it  wants.  The  great 
French  forte  is  to  posit  life  first  of  all  as  an  axiom. 
No  one  in  France  asks  whether  it  is  worth  living,  and 
very  few  why  it  is  to  be  lived.  The  deep  French 
faith  in  life  is  too  strong  to  give  such  questionings 
much  of  a  chance.  The  French  believe  in  life  hon- 
estly as  a  precious  thing,  and  when  they  speculate, 
take  its  value  for  granted.  Their  art  is  first  of  all 

<k 

45 


FRANCE 

human  because  nothing  human  is  foreign  to  them; 
their  poetry  has  almost  never  charmed  magic  case- 
ments opening  on  foam  of  perilous  seas,  because  most 
things  not  human  are  foreign  to  them.  Their  life 
is  a  work  of  art;  they  are  first  of  all  artists  in  their 
lives.  Ibsen  talked  of  "living  one's  life";  the  little 
French  bourgeois  did  it  before,  in  his  own  way. 

From  the  highest  thoughts  of  French  art  to  the 
humblest  French  social  prejudices,  the  French  spirit 
serves  life  on  this  earth.  Ordinary  French  lives  are 
human  as  the  greatest  French  writers  have  been  hu- 
man. They  are  planned  and  carried  out.  The  peas- 
ant knowing  which  fields  which  son  and  daughter  will 
come  into,  and  tilling  them  well  that  sons  and  daugh- 
ters may  take  on  the  old  duty  of  the  soil;  the  black- 
coated  or  shirt-sleeved  wage-earner  of  the  town  put- 
ting by  out  of  tiny  earnings — larger  for  the  second 
than  the  first — that  "the  family"  may  carry  on  a  "so- 
cial position";  the  little  bourgeois,  small  capitalist, 
planning  matches  for  son  and  daughter — all  are  urged 
on  by  the  strong  French  faith  in  life.  It  fails  almost 
no  Frenchman  or  Frenchwoman.  I  have  met  women 
sweeping  the  streets  of  Paris  at  three  in  the  morning 
who  had  a  "social  position"  (no  one  would  have  dared 
to  laugh  at  them)  and  who  spoke  of  hoping  to  raise 
their  daughters  to  a  better  one.  The  postman,  the 
policeman,  the  newspaper  kiosk  woman,  the  concierge 
are  at  an  almost  exalted  "social  position"  in  humbler 
46 


FRANCE 

French  life.  Who  would  laugh  at  Madame  la  Con- 
cierge, Madame  la  Marchande  de  Journaux?  I  would 
not.  This  is  admirable  faith  in  life.  Let  things  be 
what  they  may,  let  ten  thousand  or  twenty  thousand 
franc  flats  be  let,  no  matter  or  so  much  the  better, 
the  concierge  and  the  marchande  de  journaux  live 
their  own  lives ;  they  have  their  "social  position."  Lost 
is  he  or  she  who  has  not;  Madame  la  Concierge  cuts 
(unless,  of  course,  she  has  a  flat  to  let  in  her  house) 
the  lady  whose  social  position  is  uncertain,  may  be 
flush  to-day  and  rags  to-morrow.  Even  in  the  flush 
to-day,  Madame  la  Concierge,  though  polite,  thinks 
things  strongly.  This  is  not  only  self-righteousness ; 
she  thinks  that  she  is  a  real  something  in  the  town, 
an  asset,  a  permanent  value:  she  has  a  "social  posi- 
tion." 

The  French  bourgeois  who  has  a  stake,  more  or  less 
large,  in  the  country,  is  all  faith  in  life.  There  is 
no  other  real  idea  in  him.  His  religious  faith,  to 
which  he  almost  always  clings,  must  be  a  worldly,  ac- 
commodating and  practical  faith,  such  as  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  with  serene  and  deep  wisdom  pro- 
vides. He  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  mysticism, 
if  mysticism  ever  entered  his  head.  He  is  often  as 
strict  in  some  ways  as  a  Puritan  (he  is  not  to  be 
learned  from  French  novels)  but  he  is  never  more  rigid 
than  life;  he  never  tries  to  pretend  for  the  sake  of 
principle  that  life  is  not  real.  The  lady  who  never 
47 


FRANCE 

was  seen  without  her  bonnet,  because  "life  is  a  jour- 
ney," a  great-grandfather  of  mine  who,  finding  my 
grandmother,  ten  years  old,  looking  at  herself  in  the 
glass  with  a  new  hat  on,  tore  the  hat  from  her  head 
and  threw  it  in  the  fire,  saying  her  vanity  proved  her 
predestined  damnation,  could  not  have  been  French. 

The  French  have  the  most  common  sense  of  all  peo- 
ples and  I  would  back  theirs  any  day  against  that  of 
the  English.  As  a  people  they  have  too  much  common 
sense,  but  a  bourgeoisie  can  not  have  too  much.  The 
latter's  sense  has  often  been  noted  and  is  easy  to  note, 
but  that  it  has  a  deep  root  has  not  so  often,  I  think, 
been  seen.  Faith  in  life  is  not  a  mere  figure  of  speech : 
not  only  theater-going  and  sitting  at  cafes  and  the 
gentle  jole  de  vivre  of  the  French  bourgeois.  He 
really  does  believe  in  this  life  more  than  does  the  Brit- 
ish stock-broker.  By  the  mild  light  of  this  faith  he 
governs  all  he  does.  He  tastes  of  all  things  moderately, 
of  the  divine,  of  ideas,  of  beauty;  his  is  probably 
the  most  all-round  cultivated  middle  class  in  the  world 
and  he  has  learned  just  enough  of  ideas  and  beauty 
to  get  his  temperate  enjoyment  out  of  letters  and  art. 
He  will  not  shut  his  mind  to  them,  like  some  other 
bourgeois  of  other  countries ;  but  there  is  no  question 
of  their  running  away  with  him.  Life  is  his  only 
really  important  thing :  no  fads,  "movements,"  cranks 
come  out  of  him  or  his.  Cranks  can  not  have  the 
really  deep  faith  in  life;  he  and  his  from  birth  to 
48 


FRANCE 

death  unconsciously  or  half  consciously  obey  it.  All 
the  traditions,  prejudices,  curious  little  customs  of  the 
French  bourgeoisie  are  governed  by  it.  The  judicious 
blend  of  sentiment  and  hard  cash  upon  which  the 
Frenchman  "founds  a  family"  (the  mere  words  are 
expressive)  ;  the  all-importance  of  The  Child,  not  a 
mere  interesting  event,  as  in  some  homes,  but  the  heir 
to  carry  on  the  torch;  the  all-devotion  of  the  mother, 
and  the  father's  reverence  (I  dare  say  he  keeps  a  mis- 
tress in  another  flat  all  the  time)  ;  the  boy  growing 
up  and  cared  for  even  to  the  watching  over  his  first 
amours  by  his  mother,  with  hardly  shyness  (shame 
she  would  call  false),  and  the  girl  mated  pleasantly 
and  practically,  the  cycle  thus  completed  and  father 
and  mother  ready  to  die — this  is  all  faith  in  life,  for 
those  who  read  French  things  truly. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   FT7TUBE   OF   THE    FRENCH   SPIBIT 
I 

WELL  the  French  spirit  change  or  is  it  changing? 
There  are  small  signs  of  change,  there  is  no  sign  of  a 
great  change ;  or  rather,  the  signs  of  lastingness  are 
much  stronger  than  the  signs  of  change.  The  Great 
War  brought  no  change  to  the  French  spirit.  Some 
of  the  feelings  it  stirred  up  had  been  drowsing,  some 
tendencies  of  peace-time  it  suddenly  suppressed.  That 
it  created  a  new  France  only  those  ignorant  of  France 
imagined.  The  warlike  spirit  has  always  been  French. 
Patriotism,  if  it  means  jealous  guardianship  of  a  na- 
tional character,  has  always  been  peculiarly  French. 

Seen  in  proper  perspective  the  French  intellectual 
character  looks  much  more  like  persisting  than  evolv- 
ing. Each  intellectual  generation  rebels  against  the 
one  before  it  in  an  intellectually  alive  nation  like  the 
French;  successive  reactions  do  not  seem  to  be  alter- 
ing the  essential  French  spirit.  In  the  first  decade  of 
the  twentieth  century  new  "Jeunes"  started  up  in  re- 
volt against  the  previous  Jeunes  of  the  generation 
before,  and  as  in  Moliere  "changed  all  that":  skep- 
ticism and  "Renanism"  for  faith  and  action,  with 
50 


FRANCE 

which  doubt  ceases ;  speculation  for  pragmatism ;  in- 
telligence and  the  intellectual  interpretation  of  the 
universe  for  instinct  and  "Bergsonism."  It  all  turned 
out  to  be  a  case  of  "plus  fa  change,  plus  c'est  la  meme 
chose." 

Bergsonism  promised  the  greatest  transformation 
that  would  have  been  known  in  French  philosophy :  the 
dethroning  of  pure  reason  (Bergson's  most  masterly 
achievement  in  metaphysics)  from  the  sovereign  place 
in  the  world's  riddle.  That  way  mysticism  lay,  and 
we  might  at  last  have  had  French  mystics.  Not  a  bit 
of  it ;  simultaneously  from  political  causes  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church's  influence  upon  the  new  Jeunes 
gained  strength,  and  the  modern  Roman  Catholic 
Church  has  the  greatest  objection  to  mysticism.  Thus 
Bergson  formed  a  generation  philosophically,  and  the 
generation  could  not  carry  Bergson  out  because  at  the 
same  time  it  took  again  in  part  to  the  formal  Church 
of  Rome ;  and  the  expected  French  mystics  did  not 
appear.  In  fact  the  pre-Bergson  generation  was 
more  mystical  than  that  which  Bergson's  philosophy 
of  instinct,  spiritual  intuition  and  "vital  spring" 
might  have  inoculated  with  mysticism.  At  the  same 
time  it  took  only  a  few  months  for  the  French  spirit 
to  rebel  against  the  deposing  of  intelligence.  Young 
men,  typical  without  knowing  it,  of  the  French  spirit, 
rose  in  anger  at  the  indignities  put  upon  pure  reason, 
and  some  in  the  name  of  the  Church  of  Rome  herself 
51 


FRANCE 

denounced  the  heresy  that  faith  is  not  founded  on 
reason. 

The  French  spirit  shows  no  real  signs  of  forsaking 
faith  in  intelligence.  There  lies  its  great  strength. 
At  bottom,  whatever  wild  and  curious  variations  its 
fertile  vitality  may  perform,  it  relies  always  upon  the 
belief  that  the  canons  of  human  intelligence  are  not 
relative  but  absolute — absolute  at  least  for  this  world, 
and  the  French  spirit  really  cares  about  no  other. 
Nor  do  I  see  any  sign  of  the  great  French  faith  in 
life  weakening.  French  vitality  is  not  diminishing. 
If  I  add  to  my  own  experience  of  French  life  that  of 
elders  around  me  which  goes  back  to  the  beginning 
of  the  Second  Empire,  I  find  that  French  life  under 
the  Third  Republic  is  lived  not  only  more  strongly  but 
as  carefully.  More  every  day  is  got  out  of  life,  but 
life  is  not  less  well  planned  than  before.  Paris  under 
the  Second  Empire  was  a  gay  little  village  compared 
with  the  Paris  of  the  Third  Republic.  But  there  are 
few  signs  that  even  this  hundred  times  faster  living 
means  any  less  philosophy  of  living.  The  family  is 
the  same  strong  unit  it  was  before.  Naive  French 
Juvenals  prove  my  case  by  lamenting  that  girls  go 
out  alone.  Fathers  and  mothers  have  a  bit  more 
struggle  to  keep  their  authority,  still  they  keep  it.  A 
law  of  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  allows 
(horrible  thought!)  a  son  to  marry  without  his  par- 
ents' consent  after  he  is  thirty.  Parents  are  as  much 
52 


After  the  first  communion 


Painted  by  Renard 


FRANCE 

compelled  as  ever  to  leave  all  their  property,  barring 
only  a  small  fraction,  to  their  children.  Apart  from 
and  above  laws,  the  great  faith  persists:  the  couple, 
from  the  first  child  born,  holds  a  trust  and  hands  it 
on  when  the  children  marry  and  bear  children.  It  is 
a  very  old,  a  primeval  trust ;  the  French  family,  of  the 
"gay  city"  and  the  frivolous  French  nation,  is  pri- 
meval. 

II 

Is  the  social  and  economic  spirit  of  France  chang- 
ing? If  it  be  changing  anywhere,  it  is  changing  in 
Paris.  Even  in  Paris  I  can  see  more  signs  of  per- 
sistence than  of  change.  The  country's  colonial  eco- 
nomic policy  evolves  very  slowly.  It  was  only  toward 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  private  enter- 
prise thought  of  working  such  near  possessions  as 
Algeria  and  Tunisia.  The  Far  Eastern  colonies  are 
not  nearing  proper  development.  Morocco  is  one  of 
the  greatest  Colonial  Empires  any  European  country 
has  gained,  and  though  French  enterprise  is  waking 
up  to  the  huge  chances  there  it  will  take  France  per- 
haps a  century  to  make  Morocco  pay — by  when,  bar- 
ring accidents,  it  will  pay  a  hundred  per  cent. 

Slow  development  of  the  colonial  riches  which  the 

French  quickly  and  spiritedly  won  is  the  penalty  for 

perfect    national    unity    and    extreme    centralization. 

The  French  soldier  is  splendid  at  storming ;  less  good 

53 


FRANCE 

when  he  has  to  stand  and  wait.  In  the  same  way  the 
French  people  are  all  fire  for  conquering  colonies  and 
when  they  are  conquered  tire  of  them.  Pegging  out 
is  much  less  interesting.  The  English  colonizer  takes 
to  his  job  and  finds  a  sort  of  gentleman  farmer's 
pleasure  in  opening  up  a  new  country  and  making  it 
pay.  There  are  true  French  colonizers,  but  they  are 
few:  the  bane  of  French  colonies  is  the  official  who, 
when  honest  (and  he  sometimes  is  not  that  in  the  col- 
onies) and  not  merely  on  the  make,  still  is  dangerous 
when  he  hates  his  job  and  wishes  he  were  in  Paris. 
French  Indo-China  has  long  been  plagued  by  such 
men.  They  also  are  proofs  of  the  French  spirit,  the 
bad  side  of  it.  They  are  being  slowly  weeded  out, 
private  enterprise  is  spreading  out  from  home;  like 
any  resident  in  France,  I  know  many  cases  of  French 
business  families  "expatriated"  (the  word  is  charac- 
teristic) in  order  to  work  out  their  lives  and  their 
businesses  in  French  colonies  for  themselves,  and  con- 
sequently to  develop  the  colonies  for  the  mother  coun- 
try. But  the  centripetal  spirit  still  remains  strong, 
and  it  still  is  spoken  of  that  a  French  man  of  business 
has  settled  finally  in  Indo-China,  in  Morocco,  even  in 
Algeria,  to  work  out  his  life  and  his  family's  future 
there.  Who  bothers  when  an  Englishman  decides  to 
start  life  in  Australia? 

Yet  centralization  has  its  advantages  even  for  the 
mother  country's  colonies.     It  must  not  be  forgotten 
54 


FRANCE 

that  all  French  colonies  are  represented  in  Parliament 
at  Paris,  and  that  the  deputy  for  Guadeloupe  (how- 
ever elected,  and  his  election  is  generally  a  strange 
affair)  or  the  deputy  for  Oran  are  on  exactly  the 
same  footing  as  members  for  Seine  and  Seine-et-Oise. 
Most  British  colonies  have  self-government,  but  none 
has  ever  been  offered  representation  in  the  Home 
Parliament,  and  India  has  neither.  The  domineering 
French  spirit  of  political  unity  is  at  all  events  logical 
and  fair. 

In  France  herself  some  see  signs  of  an  economic 
change,  or  at  least  in  Paris.  If  the  change  does  come 
it  will  be  an  upheaval.  If  France  gives  up  her  way 
of  living  it  will  be — no,  if  France  gave  up  her  way 
of  living  it  would  be — the  most  dangerous  risk  for 
her.  Small  land  ownerships  absorbed,  the  peasant 
turned  to  wage  earner;  small  capitalists  absorbed  by 
trusts ;  small  savings  ceasing  and  the  worker  living 
from  hand  to  mouth;  the  bourgeoisie  spending  and 
making  no  more  than  it  spends ;  a  few  great  wealths 
and  no  small  woolen  stockings — it  would  be  a  very 
different  and  a  very  shaky  France,  a  France  thrown 
into  a  different  economic  world  and  unprepared  for  it. 

French  economic  life  is  certainly  not  ready  for  con- 
centration of  forces  and  capital  upon  a  few  absorbing 
objects.  French  capital  in  its  accumulated  fractions 
can  finance  a  dozen  countries  in  Europe  and  America, 
but  could  not  combine  to  dig  for  coal  in  Normandy, 
55 


FRANCE 

where  accordingly  German  capital,  from  German  steel 
concerns,  dug  for  coal  to  be  sent  straight  across  via 
Amiens  to  Germany.  Here  again  is  a  penalty  the 
French  spirit,  the  French  economic  spirit  this  time, 
pays.  Is  it  better  or  worse  for  a  country  to  be  timid 
in  industrial  business  because  almost  every  one  in  the 
nation  owns  something,  or  to  be  bold  because  the  few 
own  much?  A  very  large  question.  The  point  here 
is  that  were  the  French  economic  spirit  to  change,  the 
change  would  be  enormous.  The  country  would  be 
turned  upside  down. 

The  reduction  of  French  freehold  landowners  from 
millions  to — as  in  Great  Britain — thousands  would  be 
one  of  the  most  sweeping  revolutions  known.  There 
are  large  capital  owners  in  France,  but  their  absorp- 
tion of  the  millions  of  tiny  French  capitalists,  though 
a  much  easier  and  swifter  operation,  would  be  as  much 
of  a  revolution.  In  the  French  country  I  can  see  no 
sign  of  either  such  change.  The  peasant  freeholder 
clings  as  much  as  ever  to  his  land;  he  has  no  more 
children  than  before;  he  tills  his  land  as  religiously 
as  ever.  Coming  generations  will  inherit  the  land,  the 
customs,  the  traditions ;  French  fields  are  the  last  soil 
from  which  a  revolution  can  be  expected  to  spring. 

The  bourgeoisie  is  supposed  to  show  the  germs  of 

the  change.     They  are  traced  in  the  faster  living,  in 

the  thirst  for  fun,  especially  in  the  motor-cars.     I 

have  heard  terrible  tales  of  French  families  which  no 

56 


FRANCE 

longer  put  by  dowries  for  their  daughters  but  spend 
the  money  on  keeping  a  motor !  The  daughters  them- 
selves enjoy  it,  and  live  at  a  tremendous  pace:  Palais 
de  Glace  skating,  Racing  Club  lawn  tennis,  tango 
teas.  I  have  heard  fearful  predictions  that  in  another 
generation  the  bourgeoisie  will  be  found  to  have  left 
nothing  to  its  heirs.  The  generation  before  saved  first 
and  lived  afterward.  Yet  I  can  not  pretend  to  honest 
commiseration  with  the  future  descendants  of  the 
French  bourgeoisie.  They  will  be  mightily  taxed  by 
the  State  most  certainly ;  they  will  not  have  been  left 
penniless  by  their  forebears.  The  remarkable  splash 
of  luxury  in  Paris  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century,  a  display  really  equaled,  all  things  consid- 
ered, neither  in  New  York  nor  in  London,  was  no 
"apres  nous  le  deluge"  bonfire.  The  Paris  bourgeoisie 
let  itself  go,  but  I  wager  that  it  did  not  let  itself  go 
as  far  as  its  tether.  From  what  I  have  seen,  I  believe 
that  the  French  bourgeoisie,  though  it  has  its  fling, 
compared  with  which  the  Second  Empire's  gay  life 
was  a  very  short  throw,  still  keeps  enough  energy  and 
capital  stored.  The  French  spirit  of  social  husband- 
ing and  social  preservation  has  not  spent  itself. 

Ill 

I  have  said  already  that  the  French  are  as  much  as 
ever,  and  want  as  much  as  ever  to  be,  one  nation.   That 
57 


FRANCE 

is  the  simplest  answer  to  the  question,  is  the  French 
national  spirit  changing?  In  political  theorizing  the 
French  nation  is  probably  the  most  vivacious  and 
mercurial  in  the  world;  in  the  facts  of  political  life 
it  is  one  of  the  most  steady  and  solid.  A  few — a  very 
few — observers  of  France,  myself  included,  persisted 
during  a  decade  of  French  strikes,  labor  trouble,  anti- 
militarist  and  anti-patriotic  propaganda,  roughly  the 
first  decade  of  the  twentieth  century,  in  calling  France 
still  the  most  solid  country  in  Europe,  and  were  de- 
rided for  paradox-mongers.  They  afterward  had  the 
satisfaction  of  seeing  many  come  round  to  their  view 
who  before  had  said  that  France  was  in  dissolution, 
preparatory  either  to  the  great  anarchy  or  the  great 
social  regeneration — that  depended  upon  their  own 
political  views.  Similar  waves  of  political  agitation 
will  pass  over  the  French  nation.  They  will  not  affect 
any  more  the  French  national  spirit  which  runs  deep. 
It  would  be  quite  wrong  to  say  that  the  surface  agita- 
tion and  violent  political  theories  of  the  French  mean 
nothing;  on  the  contrary  they  form  part  of  the 
French  national  character.  But  they  do  not  change 
what  else  is  essential  in  the  French  spirit. 

I  have  attended  some  International  Trade  Union 
Congresses.  An  amusing  thing  to  note  is  the  patriotic 
fury  of  French  delegates  when  other  nations  refuse  to 
adopt  their  extreme  resolutions ;  it  has  sometimes  come 
to  this,  that  the  body  of  French  delegates  has  stood 
58 


FRANCE 

up  like  one  man  to  denounce  the  Bo3otian  stupidity 
of  the  delegates  of  all  other  nations,  for  instance  for 
their  refusal  to  resolve  that  in  every  case  insurrection 
is  the  only  policy,  for  the  wage-earning  class  immedi- 
ately upon  a  declaration  of  international  war.  The 
French  delegates  in  public  are  blind  to  the  humor  of 
the  situation;  in  private  most  of  them  are  intelligent 
enough  to  smile  and  to  see  that  if  anything  proves 
most  frontiers  are  not  artificial,  it  is  an  International 
Trade  Union  Congress.  I  have  met  French  Anarch- 
ists who  became  almost  as  angry  with  German  Anarch- 
ists as  with  the  French  bourgeoisie. 

The  French  are  deeply  and  peculiarly  one  nation. 
The  intelligent  French  "Unified"  Socialist  (supposed 
to  be  "unified"  out  of  the  French  nation  into  one  So- 
cialist party)  feels  this  in  his  heart  of  hearts  as  much 
as  anybody.  He  certainly  feels  it  more  really  than 
the  French  member  of  the  international  smart  set  of 
Europe  that  meets  yearly,  successively,  with  mechan- 
ical regularity  in  Paris,  London,  Trouville,  Cowes, 
Scotland,  French  chateaux,  Biarritz,  Paris,  San  Mo- 
ritz,  Egypt,  Monte  Carlo  and  Paris  again,  who  never- 
theless is  naturally  a  militant  conservative  and  violent 
patriot.  The  French  International  Trade  Union  Con- 
gressman ends  by  denouncing  the  tepid  delegate  of 
other  nations  as  un-French. 

It  is  wrong  to  say  that  for  the  estimation  of  the 
French  spirit  extreme  French  political  theorism  is  of 
59 


FRANCE 

no  account,  but  it  is  quite  right  to  say  that  in  particu- 
lar French  anti-militarism  and  anti-patriotism  mean  ex- 
ceedingly little.  As  for  militarism,  the  French  always 
have  been,  are,  and  in  all  probability  will  remain,  a 
military  people.  That  is  a  detail.  French  patriotism 
is  broader  and  essential.  If  French  patriotism  were 
to  go,  in  a  France  where  the  native  population  remains 
almost  stationary,  there  would  be  at  some  not  far  off 
day  no  France.  There  is  indeed  no  fear  for  the 
French — or  for  the  world — of  that.  It  is  certain  that 
the  French  people  instinctively  understands  its  situa- 
tion. That  it  declines  to  have  more  children  than  will 
make  up  for  deaths  (if  that),  series  of  statistics  show ; 
that  it  is  determined  to  carry  on  France,  events  prove. 
The  one  chance  for  France  with  a  declining  or  sta- 
tionary birth-rate  is  the  French  spirit.  I  believe  the 
French  people  understands  that. 

The  Great  War  showed  that  it  did.  In  the  first 
decade  of  the  twentieth  century  French  strikes  and 
labor  agitation  stopped  (for  the  time  being)  suddenly. 
On  July  1,  1911,  came  the  "Coup  d'Agadir."  Nine 
months  before,  in  October,  1910,  the  great  French 
railway  strike  had  risen  and  been  smashed  down. 
Some  evidence  of  national  instinct  is  to  be  found  by 
comparison  of  these  dates.  The  German  foreign  pol- 
icy anent  Morocco  which  culminated  in  the  Coup 
d'Agadir  should,  from  the  French  point  of  view, 
have  been  invented  if  it  had  not  existed,  as  Voltaire 
60 


FRANCE 

would  have  said — he  said  that  of  the  Deity.  The  cru- 
cial dates  of  that  policy  were  1905  (the  German 
Emperor  at  Tangier),  1908  (the  dispute  about  the 
French  Foreign  Legion  at  Casablanca)  and  1911.  In 
1905  Germany  humbled  France  as  she  had  never  been 
humbled  before  except  in  1871  and  1815  (and  in  1815 
the  humiliation  was  more  for  Napoleon),  and  M.  Del- 
casse  was  dismissed  from  the  Quai  d'Orsay  at  the 
German  Emperor's  bidding.  In  1908,  over  an  affray 
about  a  German  enlisted  in  the  Foreign  Legion,  Ger- 
many demanded  an  apology  from  France;  France 
refused  an  apology;  Germany  then  no  longer  asked 
for  any.  On  July  1,  1911,  at  noon  precisely  (every 
one  was  just  going  off  to  lunch),  the  German  Ambas- 
sador in  person  informed  the  Quai  d'Orsay  that  Ger- 
many had  sent  the  Panther  to  Agadir  as  a  protest 
against  French  action  in  Morocco,  and  for  three 
months  European  peace  hung  by  a  thread. 

October,  1910,  marked,  with  M.  Brian  d's  rapid 
smashing  of  the  railway  strike  (the  greatest  strike 
known  in  France  and,  I  think,  all  things  considered, 
in  Europe),  the  end  of  a  period  of  French  labor  agi- 
tation. Neither  M.  Briand,  most  certainly,  nor,  still 
more  certainly,  conscious  public  opinion,  without 
whose  support  he  could  have  done  nothing,  had  fore- 
seen the  Coup  d' Agadir.  I  believe  the  national  in- 
stinct had.  The  great  railway  strike  in  October 
started  to  be  one  of  the  most  formidable  modern  so- 
61 


FRANCE 

cial  revolutions  known.  Think  of  it :  to  get  to  London 
one  had  to  motor  to  Calais,  Brussels  could  be  reached 
only  by  taxi-cab  (if  one  had  not  one's  own  car)  and, 
most  frightful  of  all,  the  Calais-Mediterranee  train 
de  luxe  ceased;  the  link  which  France  makes  with 
northwest  and  south,  southeast  and  southwest  Europe 
was  suddenly  snapped;  the  modern  equivalents  of  the 
ancient  routes  which  chose  France  because  of  her  lie 
on  the  map  were  stopped.  The  strike  made  one  see 
the  map  in  a  flash  and  understand  many  much  older 
problems  of  the  road.  The  great  railway  strike  was 
smashed  within  a  week ;  the  Premier,  M.  Briand,  had 
(quite  illegally,  to  all  appearances)  called  out  all 
railway  servants  as  army  reservists  for  active  service, 
as  for  a  mobilization,  and  all  striker's  were  thenceforth 
deserters,  liable  to  court-martial.  Every  one  knows 
that  no  Prime  Minister  in  a  democracy  could  do  such 
a  thing  without  public  opinion  behind  him. 

Public  opinion  must  have  unconsciously  foreseen  the 
Coup  d'Agadir.  A  period  of  fierce  labor  ebullition  in 
France  precisely  ended  just  before  the  third  German 
blow  at  France  in  the  twentieth  century.  I  watched 
the  French  national  spirit  at  work  before  that,  at  the 
time  of  the  Casablanca  incident.  I  had  also  seen  a 
far  different  France  in  1905,  when  Parliament  at  the 
head  showed  abject  funk,  and  M.  Delcasse  was  sent 
away  with  hardly  a  word  from  Parliament,  press  (ex- 
cept the  dear  old  Journal  des  Debats)  or  country. 
62 


FRANCE 

In  1908  for  three  weeks  the  country  expected  war, 
shrugged  its  shoulders,  said  "If  there  is  to  be  war, 
let  there  be  war."  I  talked  with  peasants  of  the  He 
de  France  who  did  not  love  the  idea  of  war,  but  phi- 
losophized: "Well,  well,  I  suppose  it  must  be,  if  it 
must  be.  My  boy  is  doing  his  service  at  Nancy.  I 
join  on  the  second  day  as  a  territorial,  on  the  order 
for  mobilization."  Complete  calm,  and  rather  star- 
tling determination  everywhere.  That  was  in  1908. 
The  great  railway  strike  came  three  years  later  and 
was  killed ;  it  was  national  spirit  that  killed  it. 

The  French  spirit  took  a  tonic  at  the  Coup  d'Aga- 
dir,  but  it  had  got  ready  for  the  tonic  and  that  is  why 
the  tonic  worked.  The  return  to  the  three  years'  mili- 
tary service  after  that,  to  balance  as  far  as  possible 
German  increased  armament,  was  quite  easily  made. 
The  opposition  to  the  military  measure  was  absurdly 
ineffectual  compared  with  what  could  have  been  done 
in  the  first  decade  of  the  twentieth  century  at  the  time 
of  labor  effervescence  and  before  the  French  national 
spirit,  temporarily  lazy,  had  pulled  itself  together. 
The  journalistic  idea  that  the  return  to  the  three 
years'  service  was  a  move  of  Chauvinism  was  quite 
wrong.  The  national  move  was  particularly  impor- 
tant just  because  it  was  not  a  Jingo  whim.  It  was 
inevitable,  it  was  a  mere  matter  of  practical  self- 
preservation,  once  the  national  spirit  felt  instinctively 
that  a  moment  for  self-assertion  had  again  come  by. 
63 


FRANCE 

The  vital  instinct  of  peoples  is  very  intelligent. 
The  modern  French  national  spirit  is  the  most  re- 
markable example.  Here  is  a  people,  dwindling  by 
its  birth-rate,  that  is  threatened  simultaneously  from 
within  by  social  unrest  and  from  without  by  a  country 
more  prolific  and  at  least  as  powerful:  it  shuts  up 
home  trouble,  it  defies  the  foreigner.  This  is  a  singu- 
lar proof  of  French  vitality.  There  is  a  singular 
force  in  the  French  national  spirit.  I  have  shown 
that  in  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  it  was 
not  cowed.  I  showed  that  the  French  nation  gradu- 
ally compensates  the  decline  of  its  birth-rate  by  its 
complete  absorption  of  foreigners  settled  in  its  midst. 
The  vitality  of  the  French  people  is  thus  twice  proved. 
France's  vindication  of  her  place  in  the  world  after 
Casablanca  in  1908  and  after  Agadir  in  1911,  which 
was  one  of  the  most  important  factors  in  contempo- 
rary European  politics  up  to  the  war,  was  not  the 
assertion  of  a  nation  brimming  over  with  men  fit  to 
fight,  children  growing  up,  women  ready  to  bear  chil- 
dren. It  was  the  assertion  of  an  old,  anciently  civil- 
ized, perhaps  henceforth  limited  nation,  but  of  one 
that  has  a  very  strong  will  yet  to  live,  to  be  one  nation, 
and  not  on  any  account  to  be  another  nation.  I  think 
that  this  vitality  is  even  stronger  than  that  of  a  people 
which  its  numbers  chiefly  spread. 

There  is  less  sign  than  ever  of  the  French  national 
spirit  dying.  The  French-born  people  hardly,  if  at 
64 


FRANCE 

all,  increases  in  numbers,  but  it  holds  its  own  more 
than  ever.  I  imagine  a  day  when  the  French  people 
might  be  but  a  handful  in  Europe  and  would  still  keep 
together,  like  a  last  square  of  infantry  charged  on  a 
battle-field.  All  national  characters  in  Europe  may 
die,  the  French  will  die  last. 


IV 


The  war  showed  that  it  refused  to  die.  That  one 
of  the  purposes  of  the  German  aggression  was  to  kill 
it  is  certain.  To  kill  it  without  harshness,  beyond  that 
required  by  the  needful  "frightfulness"  of  war,  to 
kill  it  even  kindly,  if  the  thing  could  be  done ;  still,  to 
kill  it.  German  Kultur  honestly  believed  the  French 
national  spirit  to  be  a  dying  thing  that  it  were  merci- 
ful to  despatch.  Why,  out  of  mistaken  pity,  let  it 
linger?  Better  a  cut  of  the  knife,  a  short,  sharp, 
frightful  war,  and  German  organization  would  set 
all  to  rights  and  make  everything  comfortable  and 
satisfactory  for  everybody,  the  French  themselves  first 
of  all.  All  the  French  wanted  was  to  be  taught  what 
was  good  for  them,  and  they  would  at  once,  with 
French  cheerfulness  and  good  sense,  see  reason.  They 
had  ceased  to  be  a  real  people.  They  had  all  sorts  of 
admirable  qualities,  none  so  ready  to  acknowledge 
them  as  Germany,  but  they  were  tired,  and  their  quali- 
ties wanted  bringing  out  and  working  up  by  German 
65 


FRANCE 

management — northeastern  France,  from  Picardy  to 
Champagne,  perhaps  some  of  Burgundy  also,  German 
provinces,  strongly  administered;  the  rest  of  France 
kept  straight  by  proper  businesslike  treaties  of  com- 
merce with  Germany ;  France  as  a  political  power 
united  with  Germany  by  a  well-knit,  comprehensive 
alliance.  France,  in  fact,  run  by  Germany  as  a  fine 
business  venture  and  on  the  best  German  methods — 
what  more  could  France  want? 

The  humor  of  it,  or  the  ghastliness  of  it,  was  that 
German  Kultur  meant  what  it  said,  that  it  knew  less 
of  France  than  did  South  Sea  Islanders,  that  it  judged 
France  in  1914  as  if  it  had  never  heard  of  history. 
Joan  of  Arc,  the  Marsellaise,  had  German  historians 
forgotten  all  about  them?  The  French  were  a  nation 
centuries  before  the  Germans  were,  and  a  polished 
people  when  Prussians  were  serfs  in  bogs.  The  war 
proved  the  amazing  modern  German  Kultur's  mistake. 
The  French  are  as  determined  as  ever  to  be  one  na- 
tion. They  have  a  great  past ;  that  is  no  reason  why 
they  should  be  effete  to-day.  The  spirit  of  Joan  of 
Arc  is  as  alive  as  ever.  More  than  that,  more  shrewdly 
and  more  clear-sightedly  than  that,  the  French  fought 
for  France,  for  their  soil,  their  homesteads,  but  they 
fought  also  for  Moliere,  Voltaire,  Renan,  for  the 
French  mind  and  the  French  spirit. 


CHAPTER  V 


FRANCE   AMONG   THE    NATIONS 


IT  is  very  useful  for  a  people  to  know  what  other 
peoples  think  about  it.  People,  like  men,  judge  them- 
selves and  find  themselves  judged  differently.  The 
knowledge  is  more  than  ever  useful  to-day  when  peo- 
ples are  more  and  more  sharply  divided  from  one  an- 
other and  when,  by  a  paradox  of  history,  frontiers 
are  the  more  strictly  defined  the  more  international 
intercourse  increases.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  trav- 
eler in  months  of  journeying  crossed  many  vague 
frontiers ;  a  student,  a  scholar,  a  monk,  an  adventurer, 
he  was  more  or  less  at  home  among  adventurers, 
monks,  scholars,  students,  at  many  months'  journey 
from  home.  To-day  the  Orient  Express  rushes  us 
across  Europe  to  Asia,  but  every  few  hours  the  sharp 
divisions  of  modern  nations  are  shown  us.  The  facili- 
ties of  modern  traveling  may  be  wonderful,  but  what 
is  much  more  wonderful  are  the  barriers  set  up  in  spite 
of  it  over  Europe:  the  deep  frontier  line  like  a  chasm 
drawn  for  instance  between  a  German  train  taken  from 
Basel  or  a  Swiss  train  taken  from  Basel,  or  between 
both  and  a  French  train  taken  from  Bale.  The 
67 


FRANCE 

medieval  student  walking  across  Europe  never  passed 
any  such  sharply  drawn  border-lines. 

If  national  minds  be  considered,  the  French  will  be 
found  to  be  intellectually  the  most  arrogant  mind. 
No  other  people,  looking  upon  itself  among  other  peo- 
ples, is  as  sure  that  it  knows  the  truth.  In  the  realm 
of  abstract  thought  it  is  convinced  that  it  reigns. 
French  reason  holds  itself  the  standard  of  reason  for 
the  world;  the  French  intellect  does  not  doubt  itself 
to  be  the  best  all-round  intellect  there  is.  No  such  in- 
tellectual assurance  exists  in  any  other  modern  na- 
tion: the  English  spirit  is  cock-sure  in  many  human 
activities,  not  in  philosophy;  the  modern  German 
mind  is,  or  was,  more  than  cock-sure,  but  with  an  as- 
surance obviously  not  resting  on  intellectual  grounds. 

Perhaps  only  the  Athenian  mind  in  the  age  of  Peri- 
cles had  the  same  serene  confidence  as  the  French  that 
it  was  right.  The  French  intellect,  as  typical  to-day 
as  in  the  age  of  Louis  XIV,  is  wide  open  to  the 
thought  of  other  nations,  none  more  so ;  but  it  trans- 
lates all  into  the  terms  of  its  own  thought,  thus  in  its 
own  judgment  setting  the  seal  of  truth  and  unity 
upon  variety  and  flux.  From  other  nations  it  awaits 
suggestion  and  fillip ;  to  them  it  gives  back  reason, 
judgment,  taste,  measure,  and  human  truth  as  far 
as  there  may  be  any.  Other  peoples  on  the  whole  ac- 
cept the  domineering  French  intellect.  They  agree 
that  a  new  theory,  a  new  dream,  a  new  aspiration  be- 
68 


FRANCE 

comes  clear  and  definite  only  when  it  has  passed  the 
ruthless  inspection  of  the  French  mind,  that  the  latter 
has  supremely  the  gift  of  expressing  universally  what 
a  corner  of  the  universe  has  thought  particularly,  and 
that  a  German  thinker  once  said  that  he  never  under- 
stood German  thinkers  until  their  books  had  been 
translated  into  French. 

They  grant  all  that,  but  they  timidly  suggest  that 
the  French  mind  may  limit  itself,  may  cut  down  per- 
haps too  many  trees  in  order  to  see  the  wood,  may  not 
have  dreamed  of  all  things  'twixt  heaven  and  earth. 
The  French  mind  will  not  listen  to  the  suggestion. 
It  has  not  been  shaken  a  hair's  breadth  from  its  self- 
assurance  by  contact  with  other  national  minds,  how- 
ever well  it  may  have  learned  to  know  them.  On  the 
plane  of  abstract  thought  the  French  mind  is  a  rock 
never  to  be  shaken.  Intellectual  vicissitudes,  waves  of 
thought  and  feeling  pass  beneath  it ;  symbolism,  mys- 
ticism passed  without  altering  the  essential  French 
intellectual  outlook.  On  this  plane  probably  the 
French  will  never  learn  from  other  peoples ;  never 
learn  that  some  other  peoples  sometimes  know  a 
poetry,  a  sense  of  mystery  more  than  they.  The 
judgment  of  nations  upon  France  in  the  sphere  of 
thought  is  thus  correct:  she  is  easily  supreme  up  to 
the  highest  point,  at  the  highest  she  fails.  One  may 
add  that  compared  with  her  they  very  often  fail  long 
before  the  top. 


FRANCE 
H 

Upon  French  thought  that  is  not  speculative  but 
practical,  upon  the  French  philosophy  of  living,  the 
judgments  of  other  nations  are  generally  wrong.  The 
French  people  is  not  regarded  by  others  as  the  one 
that  knows  best  how  to  live.  It  regards  itself  as  the 
only  one  that  knows  what  real  life  is:  French  life  is 
the  standard  of  lives,  as  the  French  intellect  is  the 
standard  of  intellects.  Other  nations  bow  intellectu- 
ally, if  with  reservations,  to  the  French  intelligence, 
not  pragmatically  to  French  ways  of  life.  This  is  a 
double  mistake  in  them:  if  they  quarreled  completely 
with  the  French  mind,  they  should  yet  acknowledge 
French  life.  The  fundamental  French  opinion,  right 
down  at  the  bottom  of  French  feeling,  is  that  the  men 
and  women  of  other  peoples  lead  insane  lives ;  the  gen- 
eral opinion  of  other  peoples  is  that  the  French  live 
amusingly,  brilliantly,  sometimes  finely,  but  not  seri- 
ously. There  is  more  truth  in  the  former  than  in  the 
latter  judgment. 

If  it  came  to  choosing  between  the  French  bour- 
geois who  calls  any  other  way  of  living  than  his  own 
mad  and  the  divine  average  of  other  nations  which 
thinks  French  life  only  skin-deep,  it  would  be  safer 
to  side  with  the  former.  Acquaintance  with  French 
life  inclines  to  sympathy  with  the  steady  French  view 
that  other  ways  of  living  indeed  are  mad.  Other  na- 
70 


FRANCE 

tions  do  not  properly  appreciate  the  human  breadth  of 
French  life,  to  which  nothing  human  is  foreign ;  it  clas- 
sifies and  distinguishes,  but  it  finally  accepts  in  some 
way  everything.  It  glorifies  family  life,  and  it  ac- 
knowledges the  free-lances.  The  father  and  mother  are 
nowhere  more  honored  than  in  France,  but  the  skir- 
misher who  never  had  the  chance  or  the  determination 
to  "found  a  family"  has  his  place  also,  and  that  he 
should  live  his  life  among  the  unattached  women  who 
are  his  equivalents  is  not  the  slightest  disgrace  to  him 
or  to  them,  or  the  least  anomaly.  Many  other  peoples 
endeavor  to  pretend  that  it  is  an  anomaly.  French 
family  life  is  the  strictest  in  Europe;  the  ties  that 
bind  a  son  to  his  house  are  never  loosened  in  the  opin- 
ion of  the  people.  But  the  son  may  have  a  mistress 
in  his  young  days ;  his  own  mother,  knowing  the 
world,  will  not  blame  him.  She  has  followed  the  pri- 
meval law  that  women  keep  and  men  squander,  and 
her  daughter  is  brought  up  in  her  image.  But  there 
is  no  woman  who  knows  life  so  well  as  a  French  mother 
and  wife;  the  husband  even  strayeth,  yet  is  gently 
brought  back.  The  boy  having  learned  life  and  been 
taught  with  some  blows  (his  mother  consoled  him  with- 
out any  shame)  marries,  and  the  family  goes  on. 
There  is  no  hardness  in  this ;  the  French  family  merely 
looks  life  in  the  face.  It  merely  thinks  that  to  exact 
from  a  boy  the  same  chastity  as  from  his  sister,  to 
judge  alike  the  unfaithful  wife  and  the  unfaithful 
71 


FRANCE 

husband  is  hypocrisy ;  that  the  only  thing  that  mat- 
ters finally  is  the  hearth,  the  father  and  the  mother 
and  the  children  around  it.  They  do  keep  round  it, 
though  there  be  no  French  word  for  home. 

The  other  nations  often  might  have  less  of  the  pre- 
tense of  home  and  more  of  the  thing.  The  French 
philosophy  of  life  is  the  most  broadly  sane  because  it 
encompasses  the  greatest  variety  of  aspects :  it  unites 
sentiment  with  sense,  combines  business  and  romance 
in  a  judicious  blend ;  believes  in  the  hearth  and  believes 
in  the  cafe;  is  strait-laced  at  home,  because  home  is 
serious  and  lasting,  and  accepts  Palais-Royal  farces, 
because  farces  are  gay  bubbles  on  the  surface.  French 
travelers  do  not  observe  the  same  all-round  accept- 
ance of  life  among  other  peoples.  Here  the  home  is 
wrapped  in  a  rosy  cloud  of  sentimentality,  and  when 
the  boys  grow  up  they  go  off  and  many  a  father  is 
undisturbed  at  not  seeing  them  or  even  hearing  of 
them  again.  There  the  home  is  kept  up  in  pleasant 
plenty  and  jolly  human  well-being,  and  when  the 
head  of  the  home  is  gone  the  jolly  family  finds  it  has 
nothing  to  live  on.  In  a  third  the  pretense  of  home 
is  kept  up,  and  boys  and  girls  are  secretly  or  openly 
hungering  for  freedom,  the  freedom  of  ships'  boys 
on  tramp  steamers,  the  freedom  of  girl  drudges  in  a 
city  office. 

About  French  every-day  life  there  is  exceedingly 
little  sentimentality.  Primum  vivere  would  certainly 
72 


FRANCE 

have  been  invented  by  the  French.  Their  families  are 
rational,  practical  and  natural  associations  for  making 
the  best  business  out  of  life.  Natural  affections  bind 
French  families  together  not  less  but  more  because  the 
man  and  woman  who  found  each  one  look  at  it  squarely 
as  a  small  society  within  society  which  must  first  of  all 
get  on  in  the  world,  not  as  the  chance  result  of  sexual 
passion  or  great  love.  At  a  pinch  they  might  argue 
that  the  proper  place  for  great  love  or  sexual  passion 
is  outside  the  family.  A  Frenchman  is  more  capable 
than  is  imagined,  more  capable  perhaps  than  the  man 
of  any  other  nation,  of  curbing  a  passion  or  renounc- 
ing a  love,  if  he  concludes  it  does  not  suit  his  part  in 
the  great  scheme  of  life.  He  is  among  the  men  of  all 
nations  the  great  realist ;  he  has  no  patience  with 
dreams  about  living,  impossible  ideals,  splendid  inten- 
tions. "Qui  veut  falre  Vange  fait  la  bete,"  said  Pascal, 
and  spoke  for  the  French  people.  There  is  always  a 
percentage  of  the  men  and  women  of  other  nations, 
for  instance  among  Anglo-Saxons  and  Russians, 
which  is  aiming  at  the  angel. 

Ill 

Comparisons  between  the  collective  life  of  France 
and  that  of  other  countries  are  not  the  same  as  be- 
tween the  life  of  French  men  and  women  and  that  of 
men  and  women  of  other  nations.     Rather  similar  mis- 
73 


FRANCE 

takes  are  made  by  other  peoples  in  judging  French 
national  life  as  in  judging  French  individual  life,  but 
in  this  case  the  French  themselves  are  much  to  blame. 
Ignorance  is  the  only  excuse  for  the  opinion  that 
French  men  and  women  are  frivolous ;  for  the  opinion 
that  the  French  nation  itself  does  not  conduct  its  affairs 
seriously  there  is  the  additional  excuse  that  the  French 
themselves  often  think  so  or  say  they  think  so.  They 
allow  themselves  ten  times  more  latitude  and  fancy 
in  judgments  upon  their  public  than  they  would  dream 
of  doing  upon  their  private  affairs.  Some  other  na- 
tions are  more  sensible  in  their  public  than  in  their 
private  lives,  and  I  have  known,  for  instance,  middle- 
class  Englishmen  who  were  quite  sound  on  national 
husbandry  yet  died  leaving  wife  and  children  penni- 
less. 

The  French  bourgeoisie  knows  its  own  business  and 
talks  guardedly  about  it,  but  talks  wildly  about  the 
nation's  affairs.  It  may  be  so  careful  of  its  own  that 
it  judges  the  management  of  the  nation's  by  too  strict 
a  standard,  but  it  does  not  seem  to  reflect  that  if  the 
nation  is  really  going  to  the  dogs  it  will  go  thither, 
too.  The  opinion  that  France  has  ceased  to  know  how 
to  manage  her  own  affairs  could  be  most  easily  ob- 
tained in  conservative  French  drawing-rooms.  It  has 
perhaps,  indeed,  required  foreign  observers  to  show, 
even  to  Frenchmen,  how  still  France  has  remained  be- 
neath the  trouble  on  the  surface. 
74 


FRANCE 

Compared  with  the  other  nations  of  Europe,  France 
may  be  said  to  show  the  greatest  variability  on  the 
surface  and  the  greatest  fixity  beneath.  The  bewil- 
dering changes  of  men  and  causes  in  French  political 
life  have  had  their  counterpart  nowhere  else.  Cab- 
inets last  a  few  months  or  weeks,  sometimes  a  few 
days;  a  politician  is  pitchforked  into  the  War  Office, 
the  Admiralty,  the  Government  Department  of  Fine 
Arts,  the  Ministry  of  Justice  indiscriminately,  or 
coolly  puts  himself  at  the  head  of  the  Foreign  Of- 
fice ;  and,  at  a  rearrangement  of  the  Cabinet,  the  Min- 
ister of  Agriculture,  who  had  no  notion  of  agricul- 
ture, becomes  head  of  the  French  navy  or  Home 
Secretary,  without  any  more  naval  knowledge  or 
knowledge  of  administration.  The  country  is  entirely 
used  to  this  light  way  of  treating  the  business  of  the 
country.  Party  politics  and  political  parties  change 
with  such  rapidity  that  after  six  months'  absence  a 
returned  politician  has  to  learn  the  state  of  parties 
and  groups  all  over  again,  and  politicians  have  been 
heard  of  who  belonged  to  a  party  without  knowing 
it,  or  who  thought  they  belonged  to  a  party  until 
they  discovered  the  party  had  excluded  them.  Po- 
litical causes  change  almost  as  quickly:  the  defense 
of  the  Republic  against  Reaction  one  day,  against 
Revolution  the  next;  six  months  of  State  Socialism, 
then  a  sudden  right  about  face  and  a  year  of  social 
preservation;  coquetting  with  Trade  Unionism,  then 
75 


FRANCE 

sudden  panic  fear  of  Syndicalism  and  a  fit  of  despotic 
repression.  At  the  beginning  of  the  present  century 
the  country  went  through  violent  social  upheavals 
which  threatened  revolution,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
Dreyfus  Case,  which  threatened  civil  war  a  few  years 
before,  or  of  Boulangisra,  which  threatened  the  upset  of 
the  Republic  and  the  revival  of  autocracy.  No  other 
European  country  passed  through  such  crises  in  mod- 
ern times;  none  could  have  emerged  from  such  crises 
fundamentally  so  unshaken. 


IV 


France  among  the  nations,  after  being  considered 
like  a  person  in  her  character,  must  be  considered  in 
her  politics  as  a  nation.  How,  since  the  first  French 
Revolution,  have  other  nations  behaved  to  France,  and 
how  has  France  behaved  to  them?  Burke' s  throwing 
of  a  dagger  on  the  floor  of  the  House  of  Commons 
remained  (in  spite  of  Sheridan  saying,  "There's  the 
knife,  where  is  the  fork?")  a  meaning  gesture  in 
Europe.  Among  the  ruling  influences  in  the  great 
European  powers  there  were  several  in  the  nineteenth 
century  which,  even  in  spite  of  alliance  with  France, 
echoed  Burke.  France  remained  (absurdly  enough 
for  all  who  know  modern  France)  the  firebrand  of 
Europe.  France  herself  did  not  understand  in  the 
slightest  degree  that  this  opinion  of  her  persisted. 
76 


FRANCE 

France  forgot  what  Europe  thought  of  the  French 
Revolution  and  of  Napoleon;  Europe  still  thought 
of  both.  At  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century 
it  would  have  amazed  all  Frenchmen  to  be  told  that 
Prussia  and  Austria  still  remembered  the  iron  fist  of 
Napoleon,  who  then  was  France;  that  Russian  au- 
tocracy, in  spite  of  the  alliance  of  nine  years  before, 
still  trembled  at  memories  of  the  first  French  Revo- 
lution. The  great  misunderstanding  between  France 
and  Europe  in  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury was  that  France  had  forgotten  and  Europe  re- 
membered the  France  of  the  beginning  of  that  cen- 
tury. There  was  blindness  on  both  sides:  it  was 
obtuse  of  Europe,  looking  at  the  Third  Republic,  to 
see  visions  of  the  old  trampling  and  devastating  spirit ; 
it  was  foolish  of  France  to  lose,  because  of  the  disas- 
ter of  1870-71,  all  recollection  of  the  part  she  played 
before,  that  of  the  conqueror  and  tyrant  of  Europe. 
No  Frenchman  after  1871  said  to  himself  that  Sedan 
had,  after  all,  paid  for  Jena. 

After  the  disaster  of  1870-71— if  not  the  greatest 
that  could  befall  such  a  nation,  certainly  the  greatest 
that  any  nation  recovered  from  as  France  recovered 
from  it — the  national  duty  for  France  was  plain:  a 
fallen  great  power,  she  must  win  back  her  place  as 
a  great  power.  At  the  same  time  the  birth  and  stu- 
pendous growth  of  the  German  Empire  set  the  great 
contemporary  problem  for  Europe  of  the  balance  of 
77 


FRANCE 

power.  France  had  to  tackle  that  with  the  rest  of 
Europe,  but  It  was  an  extra  hard  and  a  particularly 
vital  problem  for  her  after  her  defeat.  The  Third 
Republic  on  the  whole  faced  it  steadily  and  coura- 
geously, consistently  and  successfully,  and  on  the  whole 
pursued  a  sensible  European  policy.  The  Second  Em- 
pire had  been  less  than  a  score  of  years  of  a  fools' 
paradise.  The  Third  Republic  had  hard  facts  to 
face.  The  attitude  of  Europe  toward  it  was  for  long 
either  suspicious  or  disingenuous.  Some  powers  hon- 
estly feared  a  Republic  like  the  first,  with  barefoot 
soldiers  defeating  the  regulars  of  Europe  and  a  con- 
queror springing  out  of  their  midst ;  some  feigned  the 
fear  for  the  sake  of  a  chance  of  crushing  France  fin- 
ally ;  others  could  not  make  up  their  minds  which  would 
suit  them  better,  whether  to  let  France  be  crushed,  or 
whether  to  step  in  and  prevent  France  being  crushed, 
supposing  she  could  be  crushed.  The  time  came  when 
the  problem  in  such  terms  ceased  to  exist:  France 
had  indisputably  regained  her  rank  as  a  great  power. 
There  was  no  longer  a  probability  of  her  being 
crushed  except  by  a  coalition,  and  coalition  raised  that 
new  question  of  the  balance  of  power,  which  made 
contemporary  European  politics  before  the  war  more 
interesting  perhaps  than  they  had  been  at  any  time  in 
history,  and  which  will  continue  to  make  them  interest- 
ing after  it. 

The  Third  Republic,  somewhat  troubled  at  home, 
78 


FRANCE 

showed  a  fairly  even  face  to  the  foreigner.  There 
were  fewer  changes  in  its  foreign  policy  than  in  that 
of  any  other  great  power  in  Europe  except  the  Ger- 
man Empire.  In  the  first  forty  years  of  the  Third 
Republic  three  periods  may  be  distinguished  from  the 
European  standpoint :  colonial  conquest,  alliance  with 
Russia,  the  Triple  Entente.  The  first,  had  it  been 
prolonged,  might  have  made  France  a  satellite  in  Eu- 
rope of  the  German  Empire;  the  second  coincided 
with  the  period  of  Great  Britain's  "splendid  isola- 
tion"; the  third  was  that  of  the  balance  of  power  in 
Europe.  French  colonial  conquest  in  Asia  was  openly 
favored  by  Germany,  Bismarck's  policy  being  obvi- 
ous ;  expeditions  in  Africa,  not  near  home  in  Morocco 
but  eastward  to  Fashoda  (1898),  brought  France  to 
the  verge  of  war  with  Great  Britain.  But  in  the  in- 
terval the  Franco-Russian  Alliance  of  1891*  had  been 
concluded  against  Germany,  and  the  foundations  laid, 
visible  to  statesmen  farseeing  enough,  of  the  system 
by  which  the  equilibrium  of  European  forces  was  aft- 
erward to  be  at  least  provisionally  assured.  The 
"Entente  Cordiale"  was  deliberately  offered  by  King 
Edward  VII,  acting  "on  his  own"  for  his  country  in 
1903,  and  after  demurs  was  accepted  by  France.f 

*  "The  final  declarations  were  exchanged  on  August  27." — 
C.  de  Freycinet,  Souvenirs,  1878-1893.  M.  de  Freycinet  was 
then  Prime  Minister. 

fThe  King  visited  Paris  officially  in  May,  1903.  The 
Anglo-French  Convention  (re  Egypt,  Morocco,  etc.)  was 
signed  April  8, 1904. 

79 


FRANCE 

The  Triple  Entente  was  a  necessary  corollary.  Sec- 
ondary elements  will  easily  be  fitted  into  the  general 
scheme:  the  refusal  of  France — in  the  period  of  her 
colonial  conquest  in  Asia — to  cooperate  with  Great 
Britain  in  Egypt ;  gingerly  attempts  by  some  French 
Cabinets  at  an  understanding  with  Germany,  the  real- 
ization of  which  the  French  nation  never  would  have 
accepted;  the  understanding  with  Italy  and  the  ex- 
change of  a  "free  hand"  in  Tripoli  for  one  in  Morocco, 
and  alternate  bickerings  and  flirtation  with  Italy ;  al- 
most constantly  cordial  relations  with  Austria-Hun- 
gary, not  to  the  satisfaction  of  the  Triple  Alliance. 
Crucial  dates  from  1871  to  1914  in  the  relations 
of  France  to  Europe  need  no  commentary:  1891,  the 
Franco-Russian  Alliance;  1903,  King  Edward  VII 
brought  the  offer  of  the  Entente  Cordiale  to  Paris; 
1905,  the  German  Emperor's  visit  to  Tangier  and  its 
direct  consequence,  the  fall  of  M.  Delcasse  from  the 
Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs;  the  Algeciras  Confer- 
ence about  Morocco;  1908,  the  "Casablanca  incident," 
when  over  an  affray  between  French  and  German 
agents  Germany  demanded  an  apology  from  France 
and  was  refused  one,  then  said  no  more;  1911,  the 
Coup  d'Agadir,  the  German  war-ship  suddenly  sent 
to  the  Morocco  coast,  the  subsequent  cession  by  France 
of  a  portion  of  the  Congo  as  the  price  for  Morocco. 
The  reconciliation  between  Great  Britain  and  Russia, 
resulting  in  the  Triple  Entente  the  capture  of  Trip- 
80 


FRANCE 

oil  from  Turkey  by  Italy,  the  upheaval  in  the  Balkans 
closing  the  Salonica  road  to  Austria-Hungary,  were 
other  events  that  more  or  less  directly  concerned 
France.  The  French  contribution  to  the  balance  of 
European  power  thus  became  clear.  Up  to  the  Franco- 
Russian  Alliance  there  had  been  no  equilibrium,  but 
German  predominance.  After  the  Entente  Cordiale, 
which  was  virtually  the  Triple  Entente  already, 
France,  giving  up  shadowy  rights  in  Egypt  and  given 
potential  rights  in  Morocco,  seemed  there  to  be  "bit- 
ing more  than  she  could  chew."  Of  the  three  German 
counter-moves  the  first  in  1905  taught  France  a  double 
lesson:  she  could  not  count  without  Germany;  she 
must  be  strong  enough  to  count  against  Germany, 
or  must  count  only  as  added  to  Germany.  The  sec- 
ond was  met  by  a  France  that  had  made  up  her  mind. 
The  third  found  a  France  open  to  argument,  but  ready 
to  return  blows.  A  nice  balance  between  the  Triple 
Entente  and  the  Triple  Alliance  was  thus  for  the  time 
adjusted.  The  alternative  had  been  German  hege- 
mony. In  the  system,  which  required  almost  hourly 
watching  and  nursing,  France  played  her  proper  part. 
The  Balkan  Wars  touched  Austria-Hungary;  in- 
stantly the  German  Empire  strengthened  its  army; 
in  a  few  months  France  had  increased  hers  by  a  half, 
returning  from  the  two  to  the  three  years'  military 
service.  The  balance  was  kept;  the  game  went  on. 
Under  the  Third  Republic  France  came  into  her  own 
81 


FRANCE 

again  among  the  nations;  hesitated,  shilly-shallied, 
pulled  herself  together,  lapsed,  recovered,  and  at 
length  weighed  what  she  should  in  the  balance  of 
European  power. 

V 

That  balance  was  upset.  One  power  with  one  bold 
stroke  bid  for  the  mastery  of  Europe.  In  the  period 
of  the  Third  Republic's  colonial  expansion  in  the  Far 
East,  Germany,  aiming  at  European  hegemony,  had 
maneuvered.  After  the  Triple  Entente  Germany  used 
threats.  Now  it  was  blows.  The  first  blow  was  aimed 
at  France,  to  kill  her.  If  the  first  blow  had  succeeded 
Germany  would  be  mistress  of  Europe  to-day.  The 
nations  rose  and  helped  France  to  stand  and  strike 
back.  Principally  it  was  England's  business,  as  it 
has  generally  been,  to  see  that  no  nation  ruled  Europe. 
France,  occasionally  wooed,  thrice  threatened,  now  at- 
tacked, fought  for  her  life.  For  her  life  first  of 
all,  and  she  showed  indeed  that  she  had  come  into  her 
own  place  again  among  the  nations.  She  did  not 
fight  alone,  and  alone  she  would  have  been  crushed 
by  the  superior  military  organization  of  a  power  or- 
ganized for  arms  only.  But  she  fought  her  share, 
vindicated  her  arms,  showed  that  under  the  Third 
Republic  she  was  a  fighting  people  still.  With  her 
allies  she  fought  to  prove  that  one  power  can  not 
master  Europe.  She  fought  on  her  own  to  vindicate 
M 


FRANCE 

her  defeated  arms,  to  reconquer  her  natural  frontier, 
to  make  French  again  a  country  that  for  forty-three 
years  Germany  had  never  been  able  to  make  German. 
But  France  did  not  fight  merely  for  all  that,  not  only 
to  avenge  Sedan  and  win  back  Alsace-Lorraine.  She 
fought  for  her  place  in  the  world  first  of  all,  but  she 
fought  also  for  her  place  in  the  world's  thought.  She 
fought  Germany  because  she  was  attacked ;  she  fought 
also  for  French  intelligence  and  taste,  French  measure 
and  culture.  She  fought  for  her  life ;  she  fought  also 
against  stupid  arrogance.  She  fought  unintelligent 
intellectual  conceit  presuming  without  taste,  balance 
or  humor  to  teach  the  world  the  way  it  should  think. 
She  fought  such  an  obtuse,  untutored,  comic  megalo- 
mania as  the  world  has  never  in  an  organized  nation 
seen  before.*  Germany  attacked  her;  the  raw  cheek 
of  Germany  setting  out  to  reorganize  the  world's 
thought  on  neo-German  lines  shocked  her  sense  of  in- 
tellectual decency.  France  fought  for  her  life,  fought 

*  "We  are  morally  and  intellectually  beyond  comparison 
above  everybody  else.  The  same  is  true  of  our  organiza- 
tions and  our  institutions.  William  II,  deliciae  generis  7m- 
mani,  has  always  stood  for  peace,  right  and  honor.  .  .  . 
We  are  the  freest  people  on  earth  because  we  know  how 
to  obey.  Our  law  is  reason,  our  strength  is  the  strength 
of  the  spirit,  our  victory  the  victory  of  thought.  ...  In 
a  wicked  world  we  stand  for  love  and  God  is  with  us." — 
Professor  Lasson,  two  letters  to  a  Dutch  magazine,  1914. 

"Germany,  thanks  to  her  organizing  faculty,  has  reached 
a  higher  stage  of  civilization  than  other  peoples.  They, 
thanks  to  the  war,  will  one  day  be  able  to  enjoy  that  higher 
civilization.  .  .  .  What  Germany  wants  is  to  organize 
Europe,  for  Europe  hitherto  has  not  been  organized." — Pro- 
fessor Ostwald,  in  Swedish  press,  1914. 


FRANCE 

for  the  balance  of  power  in  Europe,  fought  for  French 
thought,  fought  for  intellectual  sanity,  fought  for 
the  balance  of  mind  that  has  been  her  great  power 
in  the  world 

For  while  in  history  France  at  her  times  of  great 
political  success  has  rather  disturbed  than  restored  or 
helped  balance,  her  greatest  influence,  which  has  not 
been  political,  has  been  toward  a  higher  and  deeper 
sort  of  equilibrium.  The  real  part  that  France  has 
played  among  the  nations  has  been  played  by  her 
thought,  not  by  her  action.  The  effect  of  the  latter 
has  been  sharp  and  not  lasting;  the  former  has  en- 
dured. The  best  political  successes  of  France  have 
not  been  what  has  most  spread  French  influence.  The 
victories  of  Louis  Quatorze  have  long  since  spent  their 
effect,  the  spirit  of  the  Siecle  de  Louis  Quatorze  re- 
mains and  is  a  great  part  of  France's  influence  to-day 
upon  the  world.  Would  there  have  been  a  Siecle  de 
Louis  Quatorze  if  he  had  not  reigned  in  a  time  of 
French  political  success?  Perhaps  not,  but  it  is  the 
French  mind  of  his  time  that  has  lasted,  while  his 
political  world  is  dead.  Napoleon  with  France  behind 
him  upset  and  remade  Europe;  what  remains  of  his 
doings  is  almost  nothing;  the  French  mind  lasts,  and 
what  has  lasted  of  him  is  the  part  of  influence  he  had 
upon  it. 

French  thought  has  had  great,  French  deed  little, 
influence  upon  the  world.  English  doings  have  last- 
84 


FRANCE 

ingly  changed  the  world,  and  the  world  remains  im- 
pervious to  English  thought.  French  reason  has  to 
some  extent  fashioned  all  reasoning  minds  in  the  world 
after  its  image.  It  is  a  very  notable  thing  that  Eng- 
lish influence  has  spread  little  beyond  English  mate- 
rial power;  the  influence  of  the  French  mind  has 
spread  to  where  French  material  power  never  existed. 
Sedan  would  have  killed  France  among  the  nations, 
if  it  could  have  killed  the  French  mind.  After  Sedan 
France  existed  as  much  as  ever  by  French  thought. 
Now  Sedan  is  avenged.  France  helps  victoriously  to 
readjust  the  balance  of  power,  and  rightly,  because 
she  has  always  set  the  pendulum  to  speculative 
thought.  French  reason  among  the  minds  of  the 
nations  is  the  greatest  reason  for  France  why  she 
should  keep  her  place  among  the  nations.  The  mind 
prevails,  but  physical  force  helps  it.  In  the  long  run 
the  greatest  force  of  French  patriotism  will  be  faith 
in  French  reason.  I  have  heard  French  Anarchists 
who  believed  in  no  patriotisms  violently  prove  French 
reason.  They  said  they  would  not  care  if  France  lost 
her  place  among  the  nations.  They  would  have  cared 
extremely  if  French  thought  had  dropped  out  of  the 
thought  of  nations. 


CHAPTER  VI 


GOVEKNMEXT AUTHORITY 


THE  Third  French  Republic,  as  established  by  the 
Constitution  which  the  Congress  of  Versailles  voted 
by  a  majority  of  one  on  January  30,  1875,*  is  a  con- 
stitutional monarchy  with  a  monarch  elected  for  seven 
years  by  both  Houses  of  Parliament.  It  is  not  a 
Republic  in  the  sense  that  the  United  States  is  a 
Republic.  The  President  of  the  French  Republic  is 
not  chosen  by  the  French  people  as  its  leader,  repre- 
sentative and  spokesman.  He  is  not  in  an  even  remote 
degree,  in  theory  or  in  practise,  elected  by  the  people. 
Parliamentary  elections  in  no  manner  turn  upon  a 
past  or  coming  Presidential  election.  If  it  happen 
that  the  quadrennial  election  by  universal  suffrage  of 
the  Chamber  of  Deputies  or  the  triennial  election  by 

*  "On  January  30,  1875,  an  ever  memorable  date,  the  As- 
sembly passed  by  a  majority  of  one  vote,  333  to  352,  the 
Wallon  amendment  thus  worded:  The  President  of  the 
Republic  is  elected  for  seven  years.' " — C.  de  Freycinet, 
Souvenirs.  The  Constitution  of  the  Third  Republic  tech- 
nically resides  In  the  Constitutional  laws  also  voted  on 
February  24  and  25  and  July  16,  1875,  modified  by  revision 
on  July  22,  1879,  and  August  1,  1884,  but  M.  de  Freycinet 
was  right:  the  vote  of  January  30,  1875,  founded  the  Re- 
public, as  it  defeated  the  plans  (then  ripe)  of  the  Royalists 
for  a  return  to  an  hereditary  Monarchy. 


FRANCE 

second-degree  suffrage  of  a  third  of  the  Senate  im- 
mediately follow  or  precede  a  Presidential  election  by 
Senate  and  Chamber  together,  the  Presidential  elec- 
tion neither  of  to-morrow  nor  of  yesterday  will  be  a 
"plank"  in  the  Parliamentary  electioneering  "plat- 
form." It  would  be  unprecedented  in  the  history  of 
the  Third  Republic  and  it  would  be  foreign  to  the 
modern  French  political  spirit  that  it  should  be.  In- 
dividual French  citizens  have  not  thought  and  do  not 
think  of  choosing  the  Chief  of  the  State. 

He  is  the  spokesman  of  France  when  she  speaks  to 
other  great  powers.  For  seven  years  he  is  the  suc- 
cessor of  Louis  Quatorze.  The  French  people  (all 
caricatures,  satires  and  comic  songs  notwithstanding) 
acknowledge  him  as  such.  Elected  by  Parliament,  he 
is  a  seven-year  reign  constitutional  sovereign.  His 
ministers  do  not  represent  France  among  other  na- 
tions ;  he  alone  does.  He  is  not  responsible ;  his  min- 
isters are.  The  English  adage,  the  King  can  do  no 
wrong,  applies  exactly  to  the  President  of  the  French 
Republic.  A  superiority  the  President  has  is  that 
he  can  resign ;  the  King  of  England  can  only  abdi- 
cate, which  is  revolutionary.  The  President  may  be 
indirectly  forced  to  resign  by  a  vote  of  Parliament; 
the  King  of  England  may  be  impeached,  which  of 
course  is  revolutionary  also,  but  in  precedent.  The 
President  of  the  French  Republic,  like  the  King  of 
England,  is  supreme  lord  of  the  forces  on  land  and 
87 


FRANCE 

sea.  He  also  signs  treaties  with  foreign  powers.  He 
has  the  right,  with  the  sanction  of  the  Senate,  of  dis- 
solving the  Chamber  of  Deputies  without  the  latter*s 
consent. 

As  the  chief  of  a  Republican  State  the  French 
President  occupies  a  position  which  is  peculiar  and 
might  be  called  abnormal.  His  authority  does  not 
emanate  from  the  people's  will  and  he  is  not  respon- 
sible to  the  people.  High  powers,  some  handed  down 
from  the  old  monarchy  and  from  the  Empire,  have 
been  invested  in  him  by  the  Constitution.  They  are 
not  fully  exercised;  one,  the  right  of  dissolution  of 
the  Chamber,  was  only  once  exercised,  by  MacMahon 
in  1877,  and  he  was  broken.  The  President  holds 
his  authority  from  Parliament:  if,  holding  it  from 
the  French  people,  he  were  invested  with  the  same 
powers,  he  might  wield  them  with  a  bolder  and  less 
sparing  hand.  Not  having  risen  through  Parliament, 
he  would  be  more  independent  of  Parliament ;  he  might 
be,  once  elected,  equally  independent  of  the  people  for 
seven  years.  On  the  other  hand,  the  manner  of  the 
French  President's  election  gives  him  in  one  sense  a 
higher  moral  authority  than  probably  he  would  de- 
rive from  popular  election :  there  are  no  nominations, 
no  canvassing,  no  hustings,  no  speeches,  no  stump- 
ing the  country,  no  big  drum,  no  big  stick  in  French 
Presidential  elections. 

In  the  Third  French  Republic  the  powers  of  the 


FRANCE 

President  and  those  of  Cabinet,  Parliament  and  peo- 
ple form  a  nicely,  not  over  steadily,  balanced  system. 
The  whole  question  of  Presidential  power  is  one  of 
the  most  important  and  interesting  in  modern  France. 
It  has  been  and  must  continue  to  be  a  crucial  one  in 
French  politics  and  a  chief  concern  of  French  poli- 
ticians. Throughout  the  Third  Republic  a  large  po- 
litical party  has  constantly  urged  a  change  in  the 
form  of  government  which  would  allow  of  a  much 
greater  exercise  of  personal  power  by  the  President. 
It  includes  Imperialists  and  Monarchists,  who  would 
hail  a  more  authoritative  Presidency  as  the  next  best 
thing  to  a  Monarchy  or  an  Empire  and  doubtless  as 
the  stepping-stone  to  a  restoration  of  the  one  or  the 
other.  But  it  includes  also  many  convinced  Repub- 
licans, who  on  the  contrary  prefer  the  Republican  form 
of  government  at  any  price,  but  believe  that  greater 
personal  power  at  the  head  would  strengthen  that 
form  of  government,  and  honestly  have  no  fear  of  a 
return  to  any  absolute  ruler's  government  being  the 
result.  A  considerable  section  of  this  party,  includ- 
ing naturally  all  the  Imperialists,  advocates  a  radical 
constitutional  change:  the  election  of  the  President 
directly  by  the  people,  that  is  to  say,  by  plebiscitum. 
Another,  perhaps  a  lesser,  portion  advocates,  not  a 
change  in  the  manner  of  the  Presidential  election,  but 
the  vesting  in  a  President  still  elected  by  Parliament 
of  greater  powers,  such  as  the  right  to  dissolve  both 
89 


FRANCE 

houses,  to  appoint  high  officers  of  State  directty,  to 
appeal  directly  to  the  people  in  the  case  of  a  conflict 
with  Parliament. 


II 


Undoubtedly  a  fair  case  can  be  made  out  against 
what  the  plebiscitary  party  with  partisan  verve  calls 
the  existing  King  Log  system,  which,  however,  rests 
quite  as  much  on  the  usage  and  precedent  of  the  Third 
Republic  as  on  the  latter's  constitutional  law.  The 
President  may  if  he  chooses  be  a  perfectly  passive 
figurehead.  There  is  nothing  in  the  Constitution  that 
requires  him  to  take  any  initiative  whatever;  he  ap- 
points his  ministers,  the  sole  action  which  the  Con- 
stitution requires  him  to  take,  but  besides  necessarily 
complying  with  the  dictates  of  Parliament,  in  which 
his  ministers  must  be  able  to  command  a  majority, 
he  may  shift  the  direct  moral  responsibility  of  his 
choice  upon  the  two  officers  of  state  next  to  him  in 
authority,  the  Presidents  of  the  Senate  and  Chamber, 
whom  by  constant  usage  he  first  of  all  consults  be- 
fore calling  any  potential  Premier.  He  may  sign  acts 
of  Parliament  without  perusing  them.  He  may, 
against  his  better  judgment,  give  his  assent  and  sig- 
nature to  laws  which  he  may  not  only  believe  to  be 
bad  for  the  country,  but  to  the  best  of  his  ability  know 
to  be  both  unpopular  and  wrong.  He  may  never  put 
in  a  word  at  the  Ministerial  Councils  over  which  he 
90 


FRANCE 

presides  to  stop  a  Cabinet's  policy  of  which  he  dis- 
approves and  believes  the  country  to  disapprove.  He 
may  never  open  his  mouth  at  Ministerial  Councils; 
he  may  sleep  soundly  at  them. 

He  may,  as  in  L' 'Habit  Vert  and  a  dozen  other  com- 
edies, farces  and  revues,  be  the  last  to  know  anything 
that  has  happened  on  the  boulevards  and  be  informed 
of  the  telegrams  he  has  despatched  two  hours  after 
they  have  been  on  the  wires.  In  the  exercise  of  his 
prerogative  of  mercy  he  may,  like  M.  Fallieres,  re- 
prieve the  worst  murderers  one  after  the  other,  then 
suddenly  let  lesser  criminals  be  guillotined  by  the 
dozen,  because  in  the  interval  Parliament  has  passed 
a  motion  in  favor  of  capital  punishment  being  re- 
established. Nothing  prevents  him  doing  all  these 
things  or  not  doing  them.  Nothing  prevents  a  con- 
stitutional King  doing  or  not  doing  exactly  the  same 
things,  with  two  exceptions  in  the  case  of  the  King 
of  England,  who  firstly  is  excluded  from  the  Councils 
of  his  Cabinet,  whereas  the  President  of  the  French 
Republic  presides  over  those  of  his,  and  who  secondly 
exercises  the  prerogative  of  mercy  only  through  the 
Home  Secretary,  whereas  the  President  of  the  French 
Republic  exercises  it  absolutely  and  independently  of 
the  judicial  "Committee  of  Reprieves."  The  Presi- 
dent of  the  Third  French  Republic  may  quite  well, 
if  he  likes,  be  no  mentor,  and  never  lead  but  always 
follow.  In  his  relations  with  Parliamentary  life  usage 
91 


FRANCE 

has  indeed  rather  kept  him  passive  than  made  him  act- 
ive. It  has  taught  him  to  follow  the  dictates  of  in- 
tricate, shifting  and  sometimes  sordid  Parliamentary 
party  politics,  as  often  as  to  use  his  high  impartial 
influence.  Parliamentary  life  turned  on  high  causes 
or  low  intrigues,  on  great  national  policies  or  the  petty 
interwoven  machinations  of  groups,  caucuses  and 
lobby  plotters.  He  did  not  interfere.  No  President 
protested,  except  Casimir-Perier,  who  did  it  blunder- 
ingly and  with  the  same  voice  threw  up  his  office. 
Would  any  constitutional  King  interfere  any  more 
in  the  same  circumstances?  That  is  the  picture  of 
King  Log. 

But  in  the  fable  King  Stork  came.  French  Re- 
publican politicians  have  a  constant  dread  of  King 
Stork  coming  and  eating  them  up.  M.  Clemenceau, 
"the  Tiger,"  feared  M.  Poincare  devouring,  not  pre- 
cisely him,  but  more  generally  France.  M.  Poincare 
toured  France,  and  the  caucuses  of  the  old  Radical 
party  cried  out  at  "personal  power."  The  idea  of 
M.  Poincare  turning  dictator  was  comic.  The  fear  of 
King  Stork  is  not  absurd.  Superficial  or  biased  crit- 
ics of  the  Third  French  Republic  who  hold  that  her 
Government  has  not  instituted  authority  in  democracy 
pass  over  ignorantly  or  wilfully  a  strong  trait  in 
the  French  national  temper,  which  has  an  open  pas- 
sion for  freedom,  but  also  a  lurking  appetite  for 
slavery.  The  same  people  that  shook  the  world  to 
92 


F.RANCE 

win  its  rights  gave  its  life  immediately  afterward  to 
serve  the  most  glorious  but  the  most  exacting  of  auto- 
crats. In  quieter  days  the  lessons  of  past  drama  re- 
mained true.  It  is  absurd  but  it  is  true  that  a  "pa- 
triotic" political  party  with  a  military  backing 
thought  for  a  week  or  two  during  the  Dreyfus  Case 
that  pompous  Felix  Faure  might  be  made  into  a  Na- 
poleon. A  gentle  and  ambitious,  weak  and  avid  real 
Bonaparte  had  before  been  a  second  Emperor. 

The  Third  French  Republic  has  lasted  precisely  be- 
cause with  a  wisdom  more  instinctive  and  improvised 
than  conscious  and  prepared  it  guarded  by  a  compro- 
mise almost  new  in  French  history  against  the  sur- 
prises always  to  be  expected  from  the  French  national 
character.  Thus  the  political  campaigns  for  an  in- 
crease of  powers  in  the  Chief  of  the  State  are  either 
rash  or  treacherous  to  the  Republic.  Especially  the 
party  that  advocates  election  of  the  President  by  the 
people  directly  must  be  blind — or  can  hardly  be  blind. 
Such  an  election  could  lead  only  to  an  autocracy. 
Every  lover  of  France  remembers  with  pain  Boulang- 
ism,  when  a  poor  stupid  figure  of  a  man  swept  the 
country.  It  was  not  true,  events  showed,  that  the 
country  really  yearned  for  a  master ;  Boulangism  was 
a  mere  shameful  fit  of  the  French  national  appetite 
for  slavery,  and  the  Third  Republic  did  well  to  check 
it  brutally.  Had  Presidential  elections  been  by  the 
direct  vote  of  the  people,  Boulanger  might  now  be 


FRANCE 

Emperor  of  the  French:  he  would  probably  not  have 
shot  himself  on  his  mistress*  grave  in  Brussels.  No 
student  and  lover  of  France  will  maintain  that  it 
would  have  been  better  that  Boulanger  had  been  Em- 
peror of  the  French.  The  Third  French  Republic 
has  been  wise,  wiser  perhaps  than  any  other  Govern- 
ment of  France  in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  differ- 
ent from  any  other  by  its  politic  spirit  of  compromise. 
For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  French  Republics 
the  Republican  system  has  successfully  held  its  own 
against  the  lurking  national  foible  which  was  typ- 
ically if  basely  represented  by  Boulangism,  and  which 
otherwise  the  completely  centralized  organization  of 
the  country  does  and  has  done  everything  to  encour- 
age. The  election,  by  Senate  and  Chamber  assembled 
in  Congress  in  the  old  pompous  but  majestic  palace 
of  Versailles,  of  the  President  of  the  Republic,  has 
often  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  picture  of  political  pru- 
dence and  some  national  dignity.  Crowding,  crush- 
ing, chattering  in  the  Gallery  of  Busts ;  in  the  Assem- 
bly Hall,  not  a  word  but  silent  votings.  In  the  eyes 
of  the  law  beforehand  there  has  been  no  canvassing, 
there  have  been  no  candidates,  and  at  the  moment  when 
the  President  of  the  Senate,  lawful  President  of  the 
National  Assembly,  declares  that  the  ballot  shall  be 
opened,  no  Frenchman  more  than  another  stands  for 
President  of  the  Republic.  The  ballot,  by  absolute 
majority,  or  a  vote  of  more  than  half  the  voters,  de- 
94 


FRANCE 

clared,  the  Chief  of  the  State  in  posse  (his  predecessor 
stays  a  month  longer  in  office)  goes  home. 


Ill 


Nice  balance  is  the  soul  of  the  system  of  parallel 
powers  exercised  by  President,  Cabinet,  Parliament 
and  public  opinion.  The  Constitution  of  the  Third 
Republic  was  historically  a  makeshift.  The  half  im- 
provised, half  patched  regime  has  proved  more  lasting 
and  more  workable  than  any  of  the  more  elaborately 
and  deliberately  planned  forms  of  government  France 
gave  herself  during  the  nineteenth  century.  The  fact 
might  lead  one  to  believe  that  even  for  so  logical  a 
people  as  the  French,  some  mere  rule  of  thumb  com- 
bining with  logic  makes  a  mixed  method  which  an- 
swers best  for  political  life.  The  compromise  made, 
which  was  un-French  and  more  English  than  French, 
in  the  adjustment  of  Presidential  power  with  the  other 
powers  of  government  worked  satisfactorily  in  prac- 
tise. It  did  not  make  a  supreme  office  barren  of  in- 
fluence. King  Log  has  not  been  President  of  the 
Third  French  Republic,  not  even  in  the  seven  years 
of  Armand  Fallieres,  who  was  the  nearest  thing  to  a 
wooden  majesty.  Jules  Grevy,  the  honest  bourgeois 
lawyer,  betrayed  and  wrecked  by  a  knave  of  a  son- 
in-law,  Daniel  Wilson,  who  sold  orders  of  the  Legion 
of  Honor;  Sadi  Carnot,  the  upright  neutral  man  of 
95 


FRANCE 

starched,  dry-as-dust  culture,  assassinated  by  the  An- 
archist Caserio;  Felix  Faure,  the  perfect  parvenu, 
carried  off  by  amours  and  an  apoplectic  fit — these, 
before  M.  Fallieres,  approached  nearest  to  King  Log. 
Yet  under  Jules  Grevy  the  Third  Republic,  still  in 
swaddling  clothes,  grew  up  against  pretenders  to  the 
Monarchy,  against  the  still  overwhelming  Church  of 
Rome;  under  Sadi  Carnot  the  Republic  lived  down, 
after  the  scandal  of  the  sale  of  the  Legion  of  Honor, 
the  worse  scandal  of  Panama,  she  crushed  Boulangism, 
and  she  had  nearly  weathered  the  wave  of  Anarchist 
outrages  when  the  President  was  assassinated;  as  for 
Felix  Faure,  the  military  and  militarist  party  during 
the  Dreyfus  Case  almost  thought  of  sweeping  him 
up  to  a  throne,  and  he  seems  to  have  thought  it  would. 
Between  Sadi  Carnot  and  Felix  Faure,  Casimir  Perier 
for  six  months  hesitated,  then  addressed  a  message  of 
resignation  to  Parliament,  saying  that,  unsupported 
in  his  office,  he  preferred  to  relinquish  it.  His  reasons 
never  were  clearly  explained;  the  cause  of  his  failure 
seems  to  have  been  chiefly  want  of  tact.  Neither 
Jules  Grevy,  nor  Sadi  Carnot,  nor  Felix  Faure  were 
King  Log.  Jules  Grevy,  a  great  lawyer  when  elected, 
was  President  while  the  Third  Republic  was  still  strug- 
gling ;  in  his  first  term  of  office  Monarchy  and  Church 
were  deliberately  assailing  it;  his  second  term,  half 
accomplished,  ended  in  a  partly  undeserved  catastro- 
phe. Sadi  Carnot  was  a  colorless  character,  but  it 
96 


FRANCE 

was  not  without  some  doing  of  his  own,  and  it  was  in 
part  because,  like  Jules  Grevy,  he  wielded  power 
.enough  to  help  hold  the  Republic  together,  that  the 
Republic  survived  both  Boulangism,  which  all  but 
missed  being  a  restoration  of  some  Empire,  and  the 
Panama  corruption  of  Parliament,  which  might  well 
have  made  the  strongest  Government  shiver  for  its 
fate.  Felix  Faure  not  only  was  no  King  Log,  but 
probably  intended  to  be  King  Stork,  and  might  have 
been  if  his  many  cares  of  etiquette,  magnificence  and 
gallantry  had  let  him. 

Thiers,  tiny  Thiers,  first  President  of  the  Third 
French  Republic,  stood  up  against  Bismarck  storm- 
ing and  stamping,  kept  him  at  bay,  withstood  him, 
and  earned  the  name  of  liberator  patrise.  MacMahon 
tried  to  use  his  constitutional  powers  to  bring  back 
the  Monarchy,  and  the  Republic  broke  him.  Emile 
Loubet,  Armand  Fallieres'  predecessor,  saw  the  Third 
Republic  through  its  worst  crisis  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  He  was  elected  in  the  midst  of  the  Dreyfus 
Case  in  1899.  He  came  to  the  Palace  of  the  Elysee 
(he  has  said  so  himself)  "like  a  whipped  dog."  I 
can  vouch  for  it:  quorum  (not  of  those  who  threw 
mud  and  stones  at  the  new  President  of  the  Republic) 
pars  parva  fui.  I  saw  Emile  Loubet's  first  progress 
as  elected  President  of  the  French  Republic  by  the 
French  Parliament :  hoots,  yells,  stones,  mud,  and  for 
weeks  on  the  Paris  boulevards  lampoons  sold,  "Panama 
97 


FRANCE 

Loubet,"  M.  Loubet  having,  as  former  Prime  Minis- 
ter, not  been  implicated  in  the  Panama  scandals  (even 
the  lampoons  never  hinted  that)  but  winked  at  a  fu- 
gitive Panamist  corruptor  of  politicians,  on  the  prin- 
ciple that  for  the  country's  sake  it  was  better  to  let 
fleeting  bribers  fleet.  Seven  years  later  Emile  Loubet, 
having  announced  that  he  would  not  again  stand  for 
the  Presidency  and  set  a  precedent  that  his  successor, 
Armand  Fallieres,  followed,  and  that  the  latter's  suc- 
cessor, Raymond  Poincare,  has  said  he  will  follow, 
retired :  he  went  back,  almost  a  peasant  by  extraction, 
a  small  bourgeois  self-made,  to  a  bourgeois  flat  and 
to  his  farm-manor  and  vineyards.  He  left  office  with 
the  respect  of  all  France  and  some  prestige  from  for- 
eign courts  where  he,  the  almost  peasant,  bluff,  sharp, 
canny,  rugged,  had  been  received  as  the  representative 
of  France.  In  the  interval  the  Dreyfus  Case  had  been 
settled,  the  greatest  moral  upheaval  any  people  has 
known  in  modern  times  had  been  logically,  rationally 
and  sentimentally  leveled;  France  had  passed  from  a 
paroxysm  of  conflicting  passions  for  honest  patriot- 
ism and  honest  justice  to  a  tempered  judgment  both 
just  and  patriotic.  Emile  Loubet,  who  came  in  like 
a  whipped  dog,  left  honored  by  his  countrymen.  A 
President  of  the  Third  Republic  worthy  of  his  office 
can  so  use  the  nice  balance  of  power  in  which  he  is 
a  part  as  to  be  a  good  ruler. 

Even  when  opportunity  for  lasting  influence — in- 
98 


FRANCE 

fluence  that  in  seven  years  helps  to  change  the  tem- 
per of  a  people — is  not  offered,  the  Presidential  part 
in  the  delicate  balance  is  not  nothing.  Armand  Fal- 
lieres  did  nothing  and  always  followed;  he  was  per- 
haps a  proof  of  the  sufficiency  of  the  system.  He 
carried  on  what  was  handed  to  him  and  never  let 
it  down,  at  least  a  useful  achievement.  The  balance 
of  power  in  the  modern  French  state  makes  for  per- 
manency; the  price  to  be  paid  for  greater  energy 
and  enterprise  at  the  head  might  be  upheaval  and  a 
return  to  the  risks  of  autocracy.  The  force  at  the 
head  is  not  negligible,  as  has  been  shown;  to  give  it 
the  chance  of  being  more  assertive  would  probably 
not  be  a  gain.  In  its  modern  organization  France 
may  have  precisely  found  a  correction  to  its  historical 
centralization  by  this  balance  of  the  powers  of  Pres- 
ident, Cabinet,  Parliament  and  people.  So  nice  an 
equilibrium  is  almost  new  in  the  history  of  French 
government.  It  is  still  completely  alien  from  the  form 
of  the  subordinate  system  of  French  civil  administra- 
tion. The  latter  is  hierarchical  and  systematized ;  the 
Government  at  the  head  is  a  compromise,  the  first  com- 
promise the  French  nation  has  historically  consented 
to  in  its  leadership.  The  compromise  asks  for  tact 
in  the  governor,  for  tact  in  the  man  corresponds  to 
nicety  in  the  system.  M.  Fallieres'  successor,  Ray- 
mond Poincare,  is,  as  I  know  him,  not  the  man  to 
spoil  the  balance.  Georges  Clemenceau,  the  pliiloso- 
99 


FRANCE 

pher  out  of  office,  once  the  violent  pragmatist  in  of- 
fice, denounced  him  for  an  ambitious  man ;  he  is  pre- 
cisely the  man  to  carry  on  the  torch,  a  more  cultivated 
man  than  many  who  have  preceded  him  at  the  helm 
of  the  Third  French  Republic  and  a  more  thoughtful 
man,  but  not  one,  perhaps  precisely  for  that  reason, 
to  dislocate  the  adjustment  by  which  the  modern 
French  state  has  obtained  coherent  and  steady  power 
— in  an  adjective,  a  tactful  man,  and  tact  is  wanted 
for  the  part.  That  tact  should  be  wanted  does  not 
prove  the  system  insecure;  well-oiled  delicate  machin- 
ery lasts  long. 

IV 

It  withstood  the  staggering  shock  of  1914.  The 
Constitution  of  the  Third  Republic  had  not,  any  more 
than  the  British  Constitution,  been  made  with  a  view 
to  war  waging.  It  was  swiftly  adapted  thereto,  more 
swiftly  than  the  British  Constitution  was,  by  the  sim- 
plest processes:  martial  law,  a  state  of  siege,  Parlia- 
ment prorogued  for  six  months,  a  dictatorship  vested 
in  the  President  acting  through  his  Cabinet,  laws 
passed  and  money  raised  or  borrowed  by  decree,  free 
speech  and  the  Liberty  of  the  Press  abolished,  the 
liberty  of  the  subject  abolished,  the  control  of  Par- 
liament and  public  opinion  over  the  acts  of  Govern- 
ment swept  away — every  law  and  right  made  sub- 
servient to  public  safety.  The  country  never  winced. 
100 


FRANCE 

August  1,  1914,  proved  that  the  Constitution  of  the 
Third  Republic  could  be  turned  in  twelve  hours  (it 
was  that  fateful  Saturday  night)  into  an  autocracy. 
The  country  knew  in  a  flash  what  was  at  stake  and 
also  remembered  that  it  had  known  autocracy  before. 
The  Constitution  of  the  Third  Republic  could  not  be 
charged  with  want  of  elasticity.  Parliament  reas- 
sembled at  the  end  of  1914 ;  nothing  changed.  Par- 
liament, having  become  accustomed  to  the  war,  made 
spasmodic  attempts  to  assert  itself,  but  the  autocracy, 
in  the  name  of  public  safety,  continued.  There  has 
never  been  less  sign  of  revolution  or  any  political  up- 
heaval in  France.  "Revolution  in  Paris.  Poincare 
assassinated,"  said  the  German  wireless.*  The  war 
brought  infinitely  less  political  agitation  in  France 
than  Boulangism  or  Panama  scandals  or  the  Dreyfus 
Case  had  in  peace-time.  Indeed  it  brought  none  what- 
ever; on  the  contrary  it  seemed  to  have  steadied  the 
nation.  No  pretenders,  no  coups  d'etat,  no  uprisings, 
no  Communes  would  have  had  the  ghost  of  a  chance, 
if  any  one  had  thought  the  war  gave  the  opportunity. 
The  Third  Republic  tried  by  the  test  of  this  war  has 
certainly  proved  its  stability. 

*  The  statements  were  to  my  knowledge  posted  up  In 
Vienna  hotels  on  August  1,  1914. 


CHAPTER  VII 

GOVERNMENT PAELIAMENT 


""WHITHER  bound?"  A  French  friend  met  me  on 
the  Pont  de  la  Concorde.  "Not  to  that  evil  resort?" 
No,  I  was  going  home.  The  "mauvais  lieu"  was  the 
Chamber  of  Deputies.  My  friend  was  a  vague  man 
about  town,  whose  only  value  was  that  he  felt  the 
pulse  of  Parisian  society.  Parisian  society  dismisses 
the  Chamber  of  Deputies  as  a  low  place.  Except 
two  score  or  so  Conservative  members,  no  deputy  is  in 
society.  In  drawing-rooms  where  a  Radical  or  So- 
cialist member  is  received  as  a  curiosity,  he  keeps 
quietly  behind  the  armchairs  and  speaks  when  spoken 
to.  He  would  often  be  afraid  to  speak ;  he  has  little 
culture  and  no  manner.  Dozens  of  uninfluential  dep- 
uties whom  one  has  met  are  beneath  the  common  com- 
mercial traveler  in  education,  style  and  even  the  speak- 
ing of  the  French  language,  the  best  spoken  of  all 
languages.  Even  when  he  is  a  distinguished  Hellen- 
ist and  a  Unified  Socialist  combined  (such  a  combina- 
tion is  a  friend  of  mine),  he  is  shy. 

What  would  the  enemies  of  French  Parliamentarian- 
ism  put  in  its  place?  They  have  only  vague  ideas 
102 


FRANCE 

themselves.  Their  only  definite  plan  is  the  election 
by  plebiscitum  of  a  President  of  the  Republic  with 
certain  powers  of  control  over  Parliament.  No  im- 
partial and  informed  student  of  France  can  believe 
that  such  a  regime,  while  it  would  satisfy  the  lurking 
love  of  autocracy  in  the  French  national  character, 
would  hold  out  long  against  the  equally  national  and 
on  the  whole  stronger  instinct  of  freedom. 

The  Parliamentary  system  in  France  is  of  course 
not  indigenous,  but  imported.  Perhaps  the  only  peo- 
ple that  has  it  in  the  blood  is  the  English.  Many 
of  the  peculiarities  of  its  growth  in  France  are  ex- 
plained by  its  origin.  In  England  on  the  one  hand 
it  developed  gradually  through  a  long  period  of  pure 
oligarchy,  and  on  the  other  it  grew  slowly  out  of 
many  local  centers  of  authority,  long  solely  aristo- 
cratic, which,  as  it  grew,  it  fostered  and  which  were 
always  stronger  compared  with  the  British  Crown 
than  any  similar  local  powers  compared  with  the 
French  Monarchy  since  Louis  XIV.  In  France  Par- 
liamentarianism  was  almost  suddenly  planted  upon  a 
highly  centralized  country  long  used  to  autocracy,  and 
it  quickly  developed  into  its  most  democratic  form, 
with  the  abolition  of  the  House  of  Peers  and  later 
of  the  Crown  appointed  Senators. 

In  modern  French  Parliamentarianism  the  use  and 
abuse  of  authority  by  the  party  in  power  is  historically 
logical.     The  caucus  that  holds  the  majority  echoes 
103 


FRANCE 

Louis  XIV  regarding  the  state.  It  "makes  the  elec- 
tions" to  keep  in  power.  The  party  that  uses  official 
pressure  to  coax  electors,  the  officials  who  lend  their 
influence,  the  electors  who  give  their  votes  to  the  side 
whence  official  posts  and  jobs  are  to  be  had,  all  in 
part  honestly  believe  that  they  are  carrying  out  the 
right  spirit  of  Government;  the  party  in  power  is 
clothed  with  the  awful  majesty  of  the  State  and  comes 
to  believe,  like  Louis  XIV,  that  it  alone  is  responsi- 
ble for  the  country's  weal;  the  little  local  official  and 
the  village  voter  both  ingenuously  and  dimly  hold 
"our  Deputy"  to  be  invested  with  some  particle  of 
divine  right,  because  he  belongs  to  the  party  that  is 
the  State,  and  religiously  return  him  again.  I  could 
not  count  the  churchgoing  French  peasants  I  have 
known  who  regularly  voted  for  Anti-Clerical  mem- 
bers, because  the  latter,  having  once  won  their  seats, 
acquired  the  prestige  of  authority;  M.  le  Cure  for 
christenings,  marriages  and  extreme  unction,  but 
"Not9  Depute"  in  some  way,  we  do  not  know  such 
things  clearly,  represents  the  State.  And  the  State 
to  the  modern  French  citizen  is  like  the  Crown  to  the 
French  subject  of  old. 

Such  constituencies  are  what  M.  Aristide  Briand 
in  a  phrase  that  stuck  called  "stagnant  pools,"  which 
it  is  hoped  (vainly,  I  think)  to  stir  up  some  day  by 
Proportional  Representation.  The  unphilosophic 
French  political  observer  does  not  see  that  the  stag- 
104 


FRANCE 

nant  pools  reflect  the  innate  French  respect  for  au- 
thority, which  is  one  aspect  of  French  patriotism. 

At  the  source  of  authority,  at  the  Parliamentary 
fountain-head,  the  ghost  of  Louis  XIV  still  rules. 
Much  of  the  internal  policy  and  of  the  legislative 
program  of  the  Third  Republic  has,  judged  by 
Anglo-Saxon  standards,  seemed  oppressive:  the  exile 
of  Royalist  and  Imperialist  pretenders,  the  trial  by 
the  purely  political  and  partisan  High  Court  of  Jus- 
tice (the  Senate)  of  Boulanger  and  others,  then  of 
Deroulede  and  others ;  Anti-Clericalism,  and  the  re- 
fusal of  freedom  to  the  regular  orders  and  to  many  of 
the  teaching  institutions  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  But 
these  high-handed  policies  were  perfectly  honest.  The 
country  had  to  be  saved  from  Boulangism,  and  the 
Church  of  Rome  in  France  demands  freedom,  but 
would  not  let  any  one  else  have  it.  Even  the  offen- 
sively bumptious  Member  of  Parliament  who  swaggers 
through  French  life  (not  French  "society"),  lords  it 
in  the  State  theaters  (except  the  Fra^ais),  rules  the 
railways,  over  all  of  which  he  travels  free  and  exacts 
a  reserved  compartment  in  a  crowded  express  (fancy 
an  English  Member  of  Parliament  never  having  to 
pay  his  railway  fare!),  and  at  gala  performances  in 
honor  of  foreign  sovereigns  fills  all  the  best  seats  with 
himself  and  his  usually  dowdy  wife,  to  the  sovereigns' 
astonishment,  who  expected  to  meet  a  smart  house; 
even  he,  the  bumptious  little  local  tyrant  who  abounds 
105 


FRANCE 

In  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  has  a  half  honest  belief 
that  he  is  doing  his  duty  to  the  people  by  his  behavior, 
being  anointed  with  a  little  less  than  a  five-hundredth 
part  of  the  sovereignty  of  the  people. 


II 


In  the  country  authority  is  on  an  everlasting  see- 
saw: the  "administration"  and  Parliament.  "Not* 
Depute"  represents  the  State,  but  M.  le  Prefet  repre- 
sents the  State  also,  and  the  Prefect  is  as  permanent 
as  an  official  dependent  upon  the  Home  Office  can  be. 
The  Prefect  may  be  afraid  of  the  Deputy,  if  of  the 
party  in  power;  if  the  Deputy  is  in  the  opposition, 
or  even  if  he  is  not  particularly  influential  in  the  ma- 
jority, it  will  be  he  who  will  be  afraid  of  the  Prefect, 
and  M.  le  Prefet  will  be  a  little  Napoleon.  This  cu- 
rious balance  of  authority  is  the  more  remarkable  be- 
cause radministration,  shaped  by  Napoleon  I  with 
materials  from  the  monarchy,  is  legally,  in  theory  and 
to  a  great  extent  in  practise,  completely  independent 
of  Parliament,  no  offices  whatever  outside  Parliament 
itself  being  legally  dependent  upon  Parliamentary 
elections.  French  enemies  of  Parliamentarianism  cry 
out  at  its  fostering  of  favoritism :  the  village  school- 
master, the  rural  garde-champetre  might  not  have  got 
their  posts  without  their  Deputy's  influence,  and  the 
local  smuggler  may  get  off  his  fine  with  a  letter  from 
106 


FRANCE 

his  Deputy.  Favoritism  of  this  sort  is  nothing  com- 
pared with  the  system  of  countries  where  an  elected 
President  of  the  nation  has  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  Government  posts  practically  in  his  gift.  But  I 
would  go  so  far  as  to  say  of  French  favoritism  that 
it  is  not  all  to  the  bad.  Enemies  of  Parliamentarian- 
ism  in  France  do  not  seem  to  have  reflected  that  the 
influence  of  the  Deputy,  dunning  Ministers  with  de- 
mands for  jobs  for  his  favorites,  is  not  all  even  use- 
less, for  there  is  another  influence  upon  which  it  is 
a  check,  that  of  the  central  authority:  if  the  garde- 
champetre  did  not  owe  his  appointment  partly  to  his 
Deputy  he  would  owe  it  entirely  to  the  Prefect.  The 
adversaries  of  Parliamentarianism  in  France  would 
finally  but  hand  over  to  a  permanent  central  authority 
the  power  they  would  take  from  Parliament.  Discus- 
sion of  French  national  organization  always  revolves 
round  a  fountain-head  of  authority. 

Under  all  Parliamentary  party  systems  the  first  aim 
of  every  party  is  to  get  into  power.  This  must  be 
truer  still  of  a  Parliament  split  up  like  the  French 
into  a  dozen  factions.  Two  great  parties  dividing 
a  Parliament  take  office  alternately.  Among  the  doz- 
ens of  French  parties,  the  ultra-Conservative  and  the 
Unified  Socialist  parties  can  not  hope  now  for  office, 
the  former  because  it  is  too  late,  the  latter  because 
it  is  too  early.  All  the  other  parties  by  various  com- 
binations and  coalitions  can  hold  and  have  held  office. 
107 


FRANCE 

Once  in  power,  a  party  or  coalition  of  parties  tends 
to  do  nothing  except  all  things  that  will  keep  it  in. 
The  state  of  French  Parliamentary  parties  is  too  con- 
fused, intricate  and  changing  to  be  described  in  de- 
tail.* In  the  history  of  the  Third  Republic,  the  lat- 
ter having  been  finally  instituted,  an  "Opportunist" 
party  ruled:  a  party  of  practical  politics  with  two 
main  purposes,  to  help  France  to  raise  herself — as 
indeed  she  marvelously  did — from  the  fall  of  1870-1, 
the  worst  such  a  nation  ever  had,  and  to  defend  the 

*  The  parties  in  two  Chambers  were  as  follows: 

Chamber  1910 

Unified  Socialists  75 

Independent  Socialists   24 

Socialist  Radicals  and  Radicals 258 

Republicans  of  the  Left 78 

Progressists 70 

Reactionaries  90 

Two  vacant  seats 2 

Total  697 

Chamber  1914 

Unified  Socialists   101 

Independent  Socialists   24 

Socialist  Radicals  and  Radicals 261 

Republicans  of  the  Left 53 

Democratic  Left  32 

Republican  Federation    (Old  Progressists) 37 

Action  Liberate  (Catholics) 23 

Royalists  and  Bonapartists 15 

Independent  group  44 

Members  in  no  group 7 

Total  597 

108 


FRANCE 

Republic  against  enemies  at  home,  the  Church  of 
Rome,  always  under  suspicion,  and  demagogic  and 
imperialist  attempts  like  Boulangism.  Radicalism 
and  Socialist  Radicalism  then  arose,  offshoots  of  Op- 
portunism, parties  of  practical  politics  still,  but  with 
programs  of  social  reforms,  like  the  income  tax. 
The  Dreyfus  Case  drew  a  sudden  sharp  line  through 
French  political  and  public  life.  "Nationalism"  was, 
or  was  thought  to  be,  Boulangism  over  again.  It  was 
"Defend  the  Republic"  once  more,  and  the  "Bloc"* 
was  formed  for  the  Republic,  a  Republican  coalition 
which  this  time  included  pure  Socialists  who  had 
sprung  up  in  the  interval.  "Nationalism"  was  iden- 
tified with  Clericalism  putting  up  its  head  again,  and 
the  Church  of  Rome  had  undoubtedly  won  back  power 
in  the  State  and  in  the  War  Office  particularly;  the 
Bloc,  the  Dreyfus  Case  settled,  started  to  realize  the 
old  dream  of  advanced  Republicans,  and  the  Church 
of  Rome,  with  the  French  Reformed  Church  and  the 
Jewish  Church,  all  three  established  by  Napoleon  I, 
were  disestablished.  But  before  disestablishment  was 

*The  "Bloc"  was  the  majority  produced  by  the  Dreyfus 
Case  and  included  the  Socialists.  The  name  was  invented 
by  Clemenceau.  The  International  Socialist  Congress  of 
1904  at  Amsterdam  "unified"  Socialism,  pledging  Socialists 
to  support  no  "bourgeois"  Government.  "Unified"  Socialists 
henceforth  were  those  who  gave  the  pledge.  Independent 
Socialists,  Socialist  Radicals  and  Radicals  became  in  prac- 
tise one  party,  with  the  Republicans  of  the  Left  for  its 
Right  Wing,  Right  meaning  Conservative,  Left  Liberal,  and 
all  terms  being  taken  comparatively.  The  remaining  par- 
ties were  the  real  Right  of  Parliament. 

109 


FRANCE 

completed  the  Bloc  (though  holding  together  to  that 
end)  was  split;  the  Socialist  party  was  "unified." 

Henceforth  the  Unified  Socialists  at  one  end,  with 
the  Royalists  and  Imperialists,  who  at  election  after 
election  had  slowly  dwindled,  at  the  other,  held  aloof 
from  the  main  body  of  Republican  politicians.  At 
the  same  time  some  of  the  latter  had  receded  to  Con- 
servatism and  Clericalism,  taking  the  paradoxical 
names  of  Progressists  and  "Action  Liberate/'  while 
"Socialist"  Radicalism  on  the  other  hand  ceased  to 
pretend  to  be  Socialist  and  tended  to  drop  the  useless 
name.  The  Radicals  became  in  a  sense  the  true  con- 
servative Republican  party,  having  only  a  limited 
program  of  social  reforms  and  desiring  no  other 
change,*  whereas  the  so-called  Conservatives,  Royal- 
ists, Imperialists,  or  those  with  paradoxical  names, 
desired  such  changes  as  a  return  to  Monarchy  or  Em- 
pire or  at  least  reestablishment  of  the  Church  of 
Rome.  Confusion  was  increased  by  the  splitting  up 
of  the  main  Republican  party,  already  divided  roughly 
into  the  Radicals  and  the  heirs  of  the  Opportunists, 
into  several  "groups,"  some  exclusive,  some  overlap- 
ping.f  Governing  in  Parliament  became  a  perpetual 

*  Especially  not  proportional  representation  by  which  It 
feared  to  lose  seats,  whereas  the  Unified  Socialists  and  most 
of  the  extreme  Conservatives  hotly  championed  the  "R.  P." 

t  The  groups  exist  only  for  and  through  purely  party  pol- 
itics. Quite  distinct  are  the  Senate  and  Chamber  "Commis- 
sions," committees  chosen  proportionately  from  all  parties. 
These  Commissions,  an  institution  peculiar  to  French  Par- 

110 


FRANCE 

puzzle :  on  which  vote  which  "groups"  would  make  up 
the  majority?  Sometimes  the  Unified  Socialists  would 
come  in  and  half  the  Radicals  stay  out ;  sometimes  all 
the  Conservatives  would  come  in  with  the  Unified  So- 
cialists, and  all  the  Radicals  go  in  the  minority ;  some- 
times the  Unified  Socialists  would  be  in  opposition  and 
all  the  Radicals  with  the  Government.  All  the  time 
the  Senate  reflected  the  Chamber,  though  always  ton- 
ing down  the  reflection,  as  became  an  assembly  elected 
by  second  degree  suffrage,  and  renewed  by  thirds  tri- 
ennially,  yet  holding;  greater  powers  than  the  House 
of  Lords  even  before  the  Veto  Bill,  for  the  free  as- 
sent of  the  Senate  to  all  bills  whatsoever  is  required 
before  they  can  become  law.  The  Senate  was  split 
up  also  into  groups  corresponding  closely  to  those  of 
the  Chamber,  but  with  one  important  exception:  no 
"Unified  Socialist"  has  yet  found  his  way  into  the 
Senate. 

m 

The  day  to  day  observer  of  French  Parliamentary 
life,  bewildered  by  the  spectacle  of  kaleidoscopic  and 

liamentarism,  and  a  valuable  one,  do  in  practise  the  bulk 
of  the  work  of  the  French  Parliament  and  do  it  discreetly, 
their  proceedings  being  private.  They  include  the  Commis- 
sion on  Foreign  Affairs,  the  Commission  on  Finance,  etc., 
and  the  Chairman  of  one  or  the  other  is  in  effect  a  deputy 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  or  Minister  of  Finance.  The 
Ministers  appear  regularly  before  the  Commissions  and  un- 
burthen  themselves  or  are  cross-examined,  always  under 
the  seal  of  secrecy.  The  system  thus  allows  of  considerable 
business  being  discharged  more  expeditiously  than  in  Par- 
liamentary public  debate. 

Ill 


FRANCE 

conflicting  factions,  sees  only  a  future  of  creeping 
paralysis  for  French  Parliamentary  politics.  The 
more  detached  student  looks  beyond  to  an  inevitable 
great  change  and  wonders  how  it  will  come,  in  France 
of  all  countries.  The  deep  cleavage  between  Social- 
ism and  all  the  other  parties  must  eventually  happen 
in  the  French  Parliament.  Mr.  Bodley  said  that  the 
ruling  parties  in  the  Third  Republic  had  by  the  end 
of  the  nineteenth  century  exhausted  all  their  political 
constructive  program.  There  is  some  truth  in  the 
statement,  though  it  is  exaggerated  through  the  au- 
thor's bias.  What  is  true  is  that  France  is  a  deeply 
conservative  country.  The  Republican  party,  from 
Moderates  to  Radicals  (who  are  in  a  sense  Conserva- 
tives and  who  are  less  radical  than  English  Radicals), 
has  few  measures  to  carry  through,  the  heavier  taxa- 
tion of  capital,  the  abolition  or  recast  of  the  Senate: 
the  former  not  a  stirring  measure,  the  latter  an  im- 
probable one,  for  other  things  will  come  to  pass  before 
even  the  mode  of  election  of  the  Senate  is  changed. 
Great  party  programs  are  in  abeyance  for  a  time. 
Parties  will  go  on  defending  the  Republic  against 
the  Church,  against  "Reaction,"  against  Pretenders, 
sometimes  usefully,  sometimes  unnecessarily.  This 
useful  work  in  the  past  will,  even  when  still  useful  in 
the  future,  be  elbowed  aside :  the  great  cleavage  must 
come  some  day.  When  French  parties  are  divided  into 
Socialism  and  Anti-Socialism,  the  Unified  Socialists  on 
112 


FRANCE 

one  side  and  on  the  other  Radicals,  Moderate  Repub- 
licans, perhaps  Churchmen,  Royalists,  Imperialists 
also,  allied  against  the  Unified  Socialists,  what  will 
happen  ?  That  is  the  Unknown. 

What  Socialism  will  come  to  in  France  is  one  of  the 
biggest  problems  in  the  world  for  social  students.  The 
French  political  Socialist  party  is  the  most  powerful  in 
the  world  and  next  to  the  German  the  most  numerous. 
Within  the  present  generation  the  Unified  Socialist 
party  may  capture  half  the  Chamber :  in  the  Chamber 
of  1910  and  1914  it  could  in  many  cases  save  or  upset 
a  Cabinet;  in  the  British  Parliament  the  Socialist 
party  is  almost  a  cipher.  How  much  does  French 
Socialism  count  in  the  country?  One  is  afraid  to  say 
how  little  one  thinks  it  counts.  In  industrial  centers 
the  Socialist  vote  predominates;  but  French  Trade 
Unions  have  little  organization  and  less  money.  The 
French  coal  miner,  poorly  paid,*  seldom  pays  his 
Union  subscription,  whereas  the  British  Miners' 
Unions  are  the  stronghold  of  Trade  Unionism.  Over 
the  land  the  peasant  freeholder  reigns ;  communism, 
nationalization  of  the  land,  have  not,  so  far  as  one  can 
see,  attracted  him  one  whit  or  diverted  him  one  hair's 
breadth  from  his  tilling,  his  hoarding  and  his  individ- 
ualism. There  is  no  latifundia  question  in  France, 
and  Mr.  Lloyd-George  would  have  had  to  seek  there 
another  occupation ;  nor  is  there  any  question  whatso- 

*  Seven  francs  a  day  is  a  good  average. 
113 


FRANCE 

ever  of  adopting  free  trade  or  of  loosening  agricul- 
tural protectionism.  Yet  the  Unified  Socialists  sat 
seventy-five  strong  in  the  1910  Chamber,  101  in  that 
of  1914,  and  often  dictated  to  the  party  in  power; 
among  their  numbers  are  some  of  the  men  who  count 
most  in  the  Parliamentary  world;  many  of  their  po- 
litical ideas  have  become  truisms  in  French  political 
life.  What  can  it  come  to  when  the  French  Parlia- 
ment is  divided  into  Unified  Socialists  on  the  one  side 
and  all  the  other  parties,  from  Republicans  to  Royal- 
ists, on  the  other?  The  great  cleavage  must  be.  No 
observer  doubts  that,  but  none  doubts  that,  however 
sharp  in  Parliament,  it  will  paradoxically  be  vague  in 
the  country.  Whoever  knows  the  French  peasant  and 
his  glebe  can  not  think  of  a  French  social  revolution 
to-day.  We  must  always  count  with  French  idealism 
that  made  the  first  French  Revolution  and  sends  a 
phalanx  of  pledged  "Unified  Socialists"  to  the  Cham- 
ber; but  barring  the  chance  of  a  sudden  wave  sweep- 
ing over  the  country,  the  French  will  not  be  the  first 
but  the  last  to  make  the  social  revolution  of  the  future. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION 

I 

THE  public  affairs  of  the  French  nation  are  man- 
aged not  solely  or  even  principally  by  the  governing 
combination  that  consists  of  the  Chief  of  the  State 
acting  through  his  responsible  Ministers  under  the 
control  of  Parliament.  French  national  organization 
is,  as  it  persists  to-day,  not  only  older  but  other  than 
the  French  Parliamentary  system  and  its  constitu- 
tional monarchy  with  a  Parliament-elected  seven 
years'  monarch.  The  total  product  may  be  called  the 
rule  of  a  bureaucracy  and  a  Parliamentary  system, 
tempering,  helping  or  hindering  one  another.  The 
final  or  the  immediate  problem  of  French  Government 
is  to  determine  how  far  and  how  the  bureaucracy  and 
the  Parliamentary  system  are  to  hinder,  help  and  tem- 
per each  other.  Unless  and  until  the  face  of  French 
society  is  changed  by  the  great  social  upheaval,  all 
questions  of  domestic  statesmanship  for  this  country 
will  resolve  themselves  into  that  one.  A  balance  of 
power  between  permanent  officialdom  and  the  authority 
vested  for  four  years  by  electors  in  their  representa- 
tives ;  the  permanent  administrative  body  subjected  to 
115 


FRANCE 

the  people's  temporary  representatives  and  through 
them  to  electoral  committees,  caucuses  and  parish 
pump  conspiracies;  bureaucracy  supreme  and  a  Par- 
liament legislating  only  by  suggestions  and  control- 
ling only  formally — the  choice  is  among  these  three 
methods.  The  increasing  foes  of  the  Parliamentary 
system  in  France  under  the  Third  Republic  have 
always  argued  in  substance  that  the  first  method 
failed  or  that  the  second  succeeded  only  too  well.  The 
third,  which  clearly  was  the  method  of  Napoleonic 
government,  has  not  by  any  means  been  lost  sight  of 
under  the  Third  Republic. 

The  Parliamentary  system  in  France  was  grafted 
on  to  an  organization  of  government  which  had  with 
it  no  likeness  or  tie.  "L' Administration"  is  the  oldest, 
most  centralized,  most  unified  power  of  its  kind  in  the 
world.  It  dates  back  to  Napoleon,  who  had  the  cen- 
tralizing genius;  its  foundations  are  centuries  older 
and  were  laid  while  the  French  Crown  was  making  the 
one  France.  But  there  was  more  local  self-govern- 
ment under  the  Monarchy  than  there  is  even  under 
the  Third  Republic  to-day.  It  was  only  the  Corsican 
upstart's  Empire  that  at  last  built  with  the  century- 
old  materials  left  by  the  Monarchy  the  iron,  mathe- 
matical, hierarchial  "administration"  of  France  that 
would  have  satisfied  the  ideal  of  Louis  XIV. 

In  French  domestic  questions,  in  conflicts  of  Parlia- 
ment versus  permanent  authority,  of  electoral  cau- 
116 


FRANCE 

cuses  versus  State  officials,  it  must  always  be  remem- 
bered that  the  central  authority,  which  does  not  depend 
upon  the  vote  of  the  people  except  through  indirect 
and  devious  causes,  wields  an  unequaled  power.  The 
German  Empire  in  home  management  must  consult 
Bavaria,  Saxony ;  the  Russian  provincial  governor  is 
far  and  remarkably  free;  in  England  the  central  au- 
thority has  no  lieutenant  outside  London  except 
shadowy  lieutenants  of  the  county.  I  have  already 
mentioned  the  French  Home  Office  and  its  strong  ten- 
tacles stretched  out  over  the  whole  country  through 
the  Prefect  of  each  department  and  his  sub-prefects, 
all  directly  answerable  to  the  Place  Beauvau  only, 
completely  independent  of  and  superior  to  all  local 
authority.  Go  to  any  provincial  capital  and  note  the 
prestige  of  M.  le  Prefet;  Mayor,  Senator,  Deputy, 
General  commanding  the  army  corps,  Bishop,  Protes- 
tant Pastor,  Rabbi,  all  stand  up  when  he  appears. 
Through  its  telephone  to  his  office  the  Place  Beauvau 
keeps  an  immediate  ear  watching  the  provinces  and  a 
voice  of  direct  authority.  The  Prefect  even  on  his 
own  sole  initiative  can  require  the  General  command- 
ing to  bring  out  his  army  corps  and  occupy  the  coun- 
try for  the  greater  safety  of  the  State. 

The  Ministry  of  Justice  in  Paris  holds  in  its  hand 

almost  the  entire  judicial  system  of  the  country,  for 

barring  the  supreme  judges  like  those  of  the  Court 

of  Cassation  and  Premiers  Presidents,  every  magis- 

117 


FRANCE 

trate  and  judge  of  the  French  judicial  personnel, 
which  is  extraordinary  and  quite  superfluously  nu- 
merous, is  a  civil  servant  dependent  upon  headquar- 
ters for  promotion  and  liable  to  dismissal  by  them. 
More  than  that,  the  French  judge  from  the  beginning 
of  his  career  has  been  a  State  servant ;  he  began  as 
some  deputy  public  prosecutor  in  a  small  provincial 
town.  To  have  reached  high  judicial  office  he  must 
have  early  begun  State  service  which  alone  leads  to  it. 
The  bar  can  under  no  circumstances  ever  lead  thither, 
for  French  counsel  not  only  can  not  be  appointed  to 
the  bench  but  by  tradition  form  a  caste  distinct  and 
antagonistic.  On  the  French  bench  sits  a  man  who 
for  the  greater  part  of  his  career  prosecuted  for  the 
State  and  never  by  any  possible  means  could  have 
been  counsel  for  the  defense.  It  is  remarkable  that 
the  French  judge  with  his  one-sided  training  can  be 
as  fair  as  he  is;  the  system  by  compensation  gives 
great  power  and  independence  to  the  French  bar,  but 
it  proves  the  power  of  the  French  State. 


The  State  Department  of  Public  Instruction  and 
Fine  Arts  rules  education  throughout  the  country. 
Provincial  universities  have  no  independence  and  little 
power.  The  University  of  Paris,  the  oldest  in  history, 
dispossessed  by  the  First  Revolution  and  Napoleon, 
118 


FRANCE 

recovered  its  charter  only  at  the  beginning  of  this  cen- 
tury. The  Minister  of  Public  Instruction  in  Paris 
directs  primary  and  secondary  education  throughout 
France.  The  curriculum  in  every  State  school  and 
college  is  the  same;  the  examinations  for  university 
degrees  are  the  same.  All  teachers  from  primary 
schoolmasters  to  university  professors  are  Govern- 
ment servants.  No  independent  body  whatever  exists 
in  the  national  system  of  education.  The  State  also 
cares  for  the  artistic  sense  of  the  nation.  The  French 
State  is  the  only  one  in  the  world  that  does  so.  Here 
I  am  considering  only  organization  of  the  State.  The 
French  State  yearly  buys  pictures  (with  fallible  taste) 
and  places  them,  in  museums  all  over  the  country,  per- 
petually pays  and  controls  stages  for  music  and 
drama. 

Can  a  good  man  for  porter  at  the  State  subven- 
tioned  opera-house  get  the  job  without  the  influence 
of  one  or  a  dozen  members  of  Parliament?  The  first 
French  State  theater,  the  Comedie  Fra^aise,  by  some 
miracle,  preserves  an  extraordinary  independence. 
May  a  public  prosecutor  prosecute  and  fear  no  Cabi- 
net orders  coming  between  him  and  his  duty?  There 
is  the  whole  question,  from  the  bottom  to  the  top,  of 
the  conflict  between  the  permanent  French  "adminis- 
tration" and  four-year  Parliamentary  Government. 
There  would  be  no  question  of  that  kind  at  all  if 
judicial  posts  were  elective  and  if  the  staff  of  State 
119 


FRANCE 

subventioned  theaters  changed  at  each  Parliamentary 
election.  The  conflict  exists  in  France  precisely  be- 
cause the  "administration" — from  Government  offices 
to  State  theater  offices — is  permanent  and  powerful ; 
it  is  a  struggle  of  Parliamentary  party  influences  to 
capture  the  strength  of  the  bureaucracy  for  their  own 
ends.  It  is  well  worth  a  party's  while  to  have  as  many 
of  its  own  Prefects  as  possible  who  each  are  Viceroys 
over  just  under  a  ninetieth  part  of  France,  and  as 
many  as  possible  of  its  own  village  schoolmasters  who 
make  village  political  opinion.  When  party  influence 
gains  control  of  so  strong  a  bureaucracy  as  the 
French,  the  result  is  not  good  for  the  country.  The 
spectacle  of  some  French  elections  "made"  by  a  party 
in  power  through  its  Prefects  and  sub-prefects  is  a 
shock  to  believers  in  democracy.  But  at  the  base  lies 
not  so  much  the  French  Parliamentary  system  as  the 
strong  and  ancient  French  permanent  organization. 
What  party  could  "make  elections"  if  Prefects  and 
sub-prefects  had  not  a  century  of  accepted  authority 
behind  them? 

The  French  domestic  problem  is  to  adjust  this  per- 
manent organization  with  the  Parliamentary  system, 
a  combination  not  yet  satisfactorily  achieved.  Short- 
sighted French  enemies  of  the  Parliamentary  system 
in  France  see  that  the  parts  do  not  yet  fit,  but  do  not 
see  why.  The  French  democracy  can  not  aim  at  less 
Parliamentary  Government ;  increase  of  bureaucratic 
120 


FRANCE 

power  can  not  be  a  safe  modern  course.  It  also  would 
be  alien  to  the  national  character  and  it  might  be 
unsafe  for  national  stability  to  adjust  the  parts  by 
weakening  the  old  permanent  part. 


Ill 


French  officialdom  may  sometimes  be  the  servant, 
the  tool  or  the  prey  of  political  factions  (therein  lies 
the  whole  question),  but  it  remains  through  the  storms 
or  breezes  very  much  itself,  an  ancient,  solid,  dogged, 
simple-minded  body.  The  official  mind  is  hereditary ; 
the  civil  servant  with  a  tiny  salary  hands  down  from 
father  to  son  an  amusing,  pathetic  but  a  respectable 
pride  of  caste.  Functionarism  has  shown  recent 
small  signs  of  waning,  and  instead  of  ten  young  bour- 
geois competing  for  one  post  there  have  been  only  half 
a  dozen,  the  other  four  striking  with  much  boldness 
out  into  business.  But  if  a  change  ever  comes  it  will 
be  (always  barring  the  great  social  upheaval,  and 
even  that  might  after  all  make  eventually  for  a 
stronger  bureaucracy  than  ever)  by  imperceptible 
degrees.  For  very  long  a  head  clerk  at  the  Govern- 
ment Department  of  Stamps,  Registry  and  Domains 
will  possess  a  pride  and  enjoy  a  prestige  denied  to  a 
grocer  earning  ten  times  as  much  and  worth  a  hun- 
dred times  as  much. 

No  one  who  has  not  lived  long  in  France  can  appre- 


FRANCE 

ciate  the  prestige  of  the  French  civil  servant,  the 
"functionary."  The  "Crise  du  fonctionarisme"  has 
been  spoken  of.  Instead  of  a  hundred  candidates  as 
formerly  for  one  job  in  the  Paris  municipal  services, 
for  instance,  there  have  been  only  fifty  or  even  ten. 
The  "Crisis"  does  not  seriously  threaten  the  prestige 
of  the  functionary.  The  latter  is  measured  not 
only  in  moral  values  but  in  francs;  other  things 
equal,  a  functionary  may  look  to  a  bride  with  a 
much  larger  dowry  than  may  a  man  who  is  not  a 
functionary.  In  the  marriage  market  one  may  say 
that  a  clerk  of  the  Treasury  with  a  salary  of  five  thou- 
sand francs  a  year  is  easily  the  equal  of  a  man  in 
business  making  fifteen  thousand  francs  a  year;  ex- 
pectations in  dowries  are  corresponding.  Thus  does 
the  Civil  Service  occasionally  marry  into  grocery, 
pork-butchery  or  the  retail  wine  and  spirit  business. 
But  as  a  rule  it  marries  among  itself  and  keeps  up  a 
caste,  one  that  seems  absurd  to  grocery  (when  not 
intermarried  with  it),  that  the  big  bourgeoisie  of  busi- 
ness looks  down  upon  as  comical,  and  that  "society" 
ignores;  but  a  caste  all  the  same,  a  caste  and  almost 
an  order  of  proud  and  upright  men  and  families. 
The  feelings  of  a  "keeper  of  mortgages"  not  only 
keeping  his  mortgages  for  the  State  but  keeping  his 
family  by  daily  care  and  often  daily  self-sacrifice  up 
to  the  tremendous  appearances  which  in  a  French  pro- 


FRANCE 

vincial  town  a  keeper  of  mortgages'  family  must  keep, 
can  not  be  understood  outside  provincial  France. 

The  amusing  pride  goes  with  admirable  honesty. 
There  is  no  other  such  honest  and  honorable  civil  serv- 
ice in  the  world  as  in  France :  at  the  top  a  few  black 
sheep,  throughout  the  millions  of  functionaries  be- 
low not  one  backslider.  Not  one  financial  and  political 
scandal  in  France  that  has  touched  the  mass  of  civil 
servants ;  a  public  prosecutor  has  been  influenced  by 
a  Prime  Minister  and  it  has  been  a  scandal ;  in  forty 
years  of  published  scandals  under  the  Third  Republic 
there  has  not  been  one  case  of  a  corrupt  judge,  there 
have  been  one  or  two  cases  of  corrupt  civil  servants 
in  other  services,  there  have  been  too  many  cases  of 
corrupt  members  of  Parliament.  In  the  Panama 
scandal,  in  other  scandals,  not  one  civil  servant  was 
implicated.  The  functionary  on  his  tiny  salary  is 
the  most  incorruptible  public  servant  in  the  world. 
You  even  dare  not  try  to  tip  a  French  policeman. 
The  traveler  harassed  by  the  vexatious  French  cus- 
toms officer  sometimes  wishes  the  French  functionary 
were  not  so  incorruptible;  it  has  never  been  recorded 
that  any  one  ever  had  the  courage  to  offer  a  douanier 
a  bribe. 

The  functionary  lives  in  a  proud  little  world  of 
his  own,  and  by  his  numbers  and  traditions  makes  up 
a  great  world  of  his  own  in  the  French  people.  He 
123 


FRANCE 

does  not  call  himself  a  public  servant,  he  would  rather 
call  himself  one  of  the  rulers  and  tutors  of  an  un- 
disciplined and  ignorant  public.  I  was  once  nearly 
arrested  for  telling  a  French  State  Railway  station- 
master  that  after  all  he  was  a  servant  of  the  public. 
"No,  Monsieur,"  he  corrected  me,  "I  am  not  a  servant 
of  the  public,  I  am  a  functionary,"  and  was  summon- 
ing the  police,  but  the  train  started.  The  functionary 
feels  himself  to  be  a  pillar  of  an  ancient  State.  He  is 
not  democratic,  he  is  not  aristocratic,  he  does  not  care 
a  fig  for  social  prestige,  he  will  rather  delight  in  an- 
noying any  important  person  whose  importance  is  not 
derived  from  the  State.  The  abstract  State  is  his 
only  deity ;  he  is  not  democratic  or  aristocratic,  he  is, 
in  the  word  coined  by  the  French  (because  they  have 
the  thing)  etatiste.  The  tiniest  Government  clerk 
says  to  himself  in  his  own  tiny  sphere,  "Vetat  c'est 
moi,"  and  because  he  says  so  is  honest,  proud  and 
often  in  daily  French  life  a  nuisance  to  the  public. 
Though  worried,  the  public  would  never  really  ask 
to  be  rid  of  him,  nor  would  observers  and  admirers 
of  France :  the  smallest  French  functionary  really  feels 
that  he  discharges  a  function  in  the  organism  of  the 
French  State. 

When  the  great  trial  came  some  of  these  humble 

civil  servants  were  found  amazingly  to  be  the  stuff 

heroes  are  made  of.     Some  bolted  before  the  invading 

Hun ;  many,  I  think  most,  stuck  to  their  small  posts, 

124. 


FRANCE 

which  became  choice  posts  of  danger.  Imagine  a 
keeper  of  mortgages,  a  tax  collector  of  a  quiet  little 
town  of  northern  France  standing  up  against  a  Prus- 
sian general  backed  up  by  an  overrunning  army.  He 
often  did  it.  He  sometimes  paid  for  it  with  his  life, 
often  with  months  of  imprisonment.  It  was  he,  the 
little  functionary,  who  was  taken  for  hostage  at  Lille, 
Cambrai,  Valenciennes,  everywhere  in  invaded  France. 
It  was  justices  of  the  peace  who  were  held  accountable 
for  the  payment  of  unpayable  levies ;  it  was  mayors  of 
little  towns  who  were  shot  when  a  distraught  German 
C.  O.  thought  he  had  heard  of  franc-tireurs.  Some 
of  these  humble  incarnations  of  the  French  State  who 
were  comic  in  peace-time  their  very  fonctionarisme 
made  great  in  face  of  the  invader.  One  will  never 
smile  any  more  at  the  little  French  fonctionnaires,  as 
long  as  one  remembers  those  of  the  Nord,  the  Ar- 
dennes, Meurthe-et-Moselle.  A  roll-call  of  humble 
heroes  is  henceforth  bound  up  with  the  records  of 
French  functionarism. 

IV 

In  the  future  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  that  the 
permanent  organization  of  the  French  State  will  not 
last  at  least  as  long  as  elective  Parliamentary  Govern- 
ment ;  one  can  easily  imagine  it  lasting  much  longer. 
Parliamentary  power,  even  though  favoritism  and 
abuse  of  influence  spread  much  more  than  now,  will 
125 


FRANCE 

not  really  sap  State  authority.  A  small  functionary 
may  sometimes  cringe  (and  have  to  cringe)  to  a  pow- 
erful politician.  Suppose  the  politician  removed  by 
a  common  accident  of  public  life,  and  the  functionary 
springs  up  again  instantly,  his  own  little  part  of 
State  authority  as  strong  as  ever,  if  not  stronger, 
for  it  will  take  the  politician  or  another  one  some  time 
to  crop  up  again  or  crop  up.  Ministers  come  and  go, 
and  the  more  rapidly  they  succeed  one  another,  the 
more  the  power  of  permanent  Under  Secretaries  grows. 
In  the  extreme  case  of  an  unprepared  politician  pitch- 
forking himself  into  the  Foreign  Office,  the  foreign 
policy  of  France  during  the  Minister's  stay  in  Office 
is  literally  in  the  sole  hands  of  the  "Director  of  politi- 
cal affairs"  at  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  who  for  that  time 
is  virtually  the  spokesman  of  France  in  the  councils 
of  the  world. 

If  in  the  future  a  French  constitutional  change,  it 
need  be  but  a  comparatively  small  one,  reduce  Parlia- 
mentary power  even  slightly,  the  power  of  the  per- 
manent State  will  be  more  than  proportionately  in- 
creased. A  great  social  change  is  thinkable  which 
might  smash  the  Parliamentary  system  altogether. 
The  permanent  French  State  would  ipso  facto  become 
almost  all-powerful.  Thus  a  great  social  upheaval  in 
France  might  soon  produce  a  reversion  to  an  his- 
torically much  older  form  of  government.  Owing  to 
the  permanent  internal  organization  of  the  country, 
126 


FRANCE 

the  chances  are  that  a  temporarily  successful  attempt 
to  reorganize  France  according  to  one  of  the  many 
and  various  schemes  of  Socialism  or  Communism  would 
shortly  surprise  its  authors  by  leading  back  to  an 
autocracy.  Changing  institutions  is  meaningless  if 
the  spirit  ruling  the  organism  remains,  and  there  are 
no  signs  of  the  spirit  that  rules  the  French  organism 
changing. 


CHAPTER  IX 


FRANCE  BEYOND  THE  SEAS 


THE  French  have  been  good  colonizing  pioneers 
— and  lost  many  of  the  best  colonies  they  founded, 
for  instance  in  the  East  Indies  and  in  Canada.  In  the 
Empire  beyond  the  seas  which  they  did  keep  and  which 
in  the  years  of  colonial  expansion  policy  encouraged 
by  Germany  they  greatly  increased — an  Empire  of 
over  four  million  square  miles  in  Africa  and  over  three 
hundred  thousand  in  Asia — the  efficiency  of  their  rule 
was  not  considered  anything  to  boast  about  even  by 
themselves,  except  in  Algeria,  where  French  adminis- 
tration is  universally  acknowledged  to  have  been  for 
many  years  past  liberal  and  wise.  Elsewhere  in  their 
Colonial  Empire  they  hardly  ever  professed  to  be 
good  administrators,  and  they  were  the  sharpest  critics 
of  their  own  colonial  rule.  What  evils  of  Government 
existed  in  the  mother  country  were  generally  said  to 
exist  tenfold  in  the  colonies.  Parliamentary  elections 
in  such  constituencies  as  Martinique  and  La  Guada- 
loupe  were  commonly  known  to  be  a  farce.  The  colo- 
nial official  was  regarded  as  being  naturally  on  the 
make.  His  aversion  from  posts  in  the  colonies  was 
128 


FRANCE 

considered  to  be  quite  reasonable ;  it  was  held  to  be  a 
matter  of  course  that  the  more  he  stayed  at  home  in 
the  Colonial  Office  the  more  promotion  he  got,  and  that 
when  he  did  reluctantly  go  out  to  take  up  a  post  in 
France  beyond  the  Seas  he  worked  off  his  disgust  and 
bad  temper  upon  the  natives  over  whom  he  had  to 
rule.  Scandals  of  maladministration  in  the  Colonies 
were  common  gossip  in  Paris  for  years,  and  fero- 
ciously satirical  plays  showing  them  up  were  enjoyed 
in  Paris  theaters. 

In  the  great  cataclysm  that  came  over  France  in 
August,  1914,  she  herself  scarcely  even  noticed  that 
her  vast  colonial  empire  of  over  four  million  three  hun- 
dred thousand  square  miles  was  not  stirred  a  hair's 
breadth.  Her  enemy  had  agents,  official  and  secret, 
everywhere,  avowedly  out  to  stir  up  rebellion  and 
preach  deliverance  from  the  French  yoke.  From  Ton- 
kin to  Annam,  from  Madagascar  to  Morocco,  all 
France  beyond  the  Seas  remained  absolutely  loyal. 
No  criticisms  of  French  colonial  administration  pre- 
vail against  that  fact.  The  mother  country,  plunged 
in  the  great  tragedy,  had  no  time  to  grasp  what  that 
fact  meant,  what  this  one  particular  fact  for  instance 
meant — the  German  army  advancing  on  Paris,  and 
French  hold  over  the  immense  Moroccan  empire  un- 
shaken. 

At  the  outbreak  of  war  in  August,  1914,  one 
frightened  French  Cabinet  Minister  actually  was  for 

129 


FRANCE 

clearing  out  of  Morocco  instantly ;  the  immediate  dan- 
ger must  be  met,  everything  else  must  go  by  the  board, 
scrap  Morocco.  On  January  28,  1915,  the  Moham- 
medan religious  festivity  of  Mulud  was  celebrated  in 
Morocco  under  French  rule  in  perfect  peace  with  more 
brilliant  ceremony  and  rejoicings  than  ever  known 
before.  On  July  14,  1915,  the  French  National  Fete 
was  celebrated  in  Morocco  with  ceremonies  and  rejoic- 
ings and  exchange  of  visits  and  tea-parties  between 
the  Sultan  and  the  French  Resident  General,  General 
Lyautey. 

In  August,  1914,  Berber  tribes,  long  canvassed  pa- 
tiently and  actively  by  German  emissaries,  were  in 
open  revolt.  Not  only  tribes  that  had  always  rebelled 
at  French  protectorate  were  on  the  war-path,  but 
others  that  had  submitted  were  restless  and  ready  for 
a  war  of  independence.  A  curtain  of  the  French 
troops  stationed  in  Morocco  was  pushed  forward  to 
keep  warring  and  agitating  tribes  in  check.  Behind 
were  formed  territorial  and  reserve  troops  either  called 
out  on  the  spot  or  brought  from  France.  All  other 
available  troops  of  the  French  Corps  of  occupation 
in  Morocco  were  sent  to  the  mother  country.  By 
October  26,  1914,  General  Lyautey  could  report  that 
thirty-nine  battalions,  sixteen  squadrons,  eight 
mounted  batteries  and  five  companies  of  engineers 
from  the  French  Corps  of  occupation  in  Morocco  had 
been  sent  to  fight  in  France. 
130 


FRANCE 

He  could  report  also  that  over  all  the  territory  oc- 
cupied by  the  French  in  Morocco  there  was  peace  and 
no  trace  of  discontent,  that  the  Berbers,  held  in  check 
by  the  curtain  of  French  regulars,  were  absolutely 
cowed,  and  that  throughout  the  country  in  French 
occupation  all  public  works,  the  building  of  roads, 
'railways,  etc.,  had  been  carried  on  as  usual.  At  the 
deadliest  moment  of  the  war  in  France,  the  Casa- 
blanca Fair,  encouraged,  managed  and  stage-managed 
by  the  French,  was  in  full  swing,  and  Moorish  mer- 
chants vied  with  one  another  to  show  their  wares  and 
deck  their  tents  with  their  best  family  curios.  Inci- 
dentally General  Lyautey  announced  that  all  German 
propaganda  in  Morocco  was  crushed.  The  Holy  War 
preached  in  the  name  of  his  Islamic  Majesty  the  Ger- 
man Emperor  against  the  French  infidels  had  never 
come  off,  and  German  agents  had  been  shot.  Chief 
among  them  were  Karl  Ficke  and  Grundler,  both  tried 
at  Casablanca  and  executed  there  on  January  28, 
1915,  the  day  of  the  Mohammedan  festivity  of  Mulud. 
There  was  some  tragedy  in  Ficke's  end.  He  was  a 
personal  friend  of  the  German  Emperor  and  a  highly 
important  person,  and  when  the  French  officer  came 
and  read  over  the  sentence  to  be  carried  out  in  one 
hour,  Ficke  laughed,  "You  French  do  like  a  joke," 
and  asked  for  breakfast.  Half  an  hour  later  the 
officer  came  back  and  said  there  was  only  half  an  hour 
left.  "You  are  carrying  the  joke  too  far,"  said 
131 


FRANCE 

Ficke,  "you  forget  who  I  am."  A  few  minutes  be- 
fore his  end  the  wretched  man  at  last  really  understood 
and  collapsed. 

His  Islamic  Majesty  the  Emperor  William  IPs 
speech  from  the  throne  erected  in  the  late  Chamber 
of  Deputies  in  Paris,  at  the  conclusion  of  which  the 
representatives  of  the  vanquished  nation  kissed  the 
Imperial  hand,  was  reported  in  the  Turkish  press  on 
December  6,  1914s.  At  about  the  same  time  General 
Lyautey  reported  that  almost  the  whole  contingent 
of  the  younger  Moorish  troops,  which  had  been 
formed  in  1911  and  had  mutinied  dangerously  in 
April,  1912,  were  then  fighting  for  France  in  France, 
and  incidentally  also  that  Emir  Khaled,  grandson  of 
Abd  El  Kader  (the  old  foe  of  the  French  during  the 
conquest  of  Algeria  in  1832-47),  whom  Germany  an- 
nounced to  be  leading  the  Rebellion  against  the  French 
in  Morocco,  was  a  Captain  of  Spahis  fighting  on  the 
French  front  and  had  just  been  made  an  officer  of 
the  Legion  of  Honor.  Morocco  under  General  Lyau- 
tey from  1914  proved  that  France  is  not  inefficient, 
after  all,  beyond  the  seas. 


II 


Not  only  was  there  no  trace  of  disaffection  among 
natives  under  French  rule,  but  natives  flocked  to  de- 
fend France  on  French  soil,  a  France  that  to  them 


FRANCE 

was  a  far  fabulous  country,  on  soil  they  had  never 
seen.  I  myself  met  hundreds  of  African  blacks  in 
a  military  hospital  for  maimed,  who  had  each  lost 
a  limb  fighting  for  France.  They  were  big  funny 
children  even  in  their  infirmity.  The  chief  difficulty 
the  hospital  had  was  to  keep  Senegalese  from  fighting 
the  Moroccans,  because  they  accused  the  latter  of  not 
being  really  French,  whereas  the  Moroccans  swore 
they  were.  I  used  in  a  small  way  to  look  after  these 
maimed  black  simple  friends  of  France,  and  remember 
having  one,  who  had  no  feet  left,  to  lunch.  He  was 
enormous,  coal  black,  a  huge  grinning  baby  with 
shining  teeth.  He  had  won  the  military  cross  for 
extraordinary  bravery.  He  had  come  straight  from 
Central  Africa,  hundreds  of  miles  from  the  coast,  to 
fight  for  France  in  Flanders,  he  had  never  seen  Flan- 
ders or  France  or  even  the  African  coast  before,  or 
any  country  but  his  mid-African  village  where  he  had 
left  two  wives,  and  he  fought  for  France  and  lost 
both  feet  and  was  joyous.  He  meant  to  go  back  and 
tell  how  he  had  fought  for  France  and  be  a  hero  in 
his  village  and  buy  two  more  wives  with  his  saved-up 
pay  and  the  allowance  for  his  medal.  He  and  his  fel- 
low blacks  were  perfect  comrades  with  the  French 
maimed,  who  petted  them  like  children  and  made  huge 
fun  of  them,  in  that  hospital  where  every  man  was  a 
war  cripple  and  almost  all  were  gay  and  cheery  with 
a  cheeriness  that  brought  tears  into  one's  eyes. 
133 


FRANCE 

Arabs  from  Algeria  and  Tunisia,  blacks  from 
French  West  Africa,  Senegal,  Guinea,  Ivory  Coast, 
fought  for  France  in  France,  fought  sometimes  like 
demons.  The  Arabs  of  Algeria  and  Tunisia  were 
officially  gazetted  to  have  won  distinction  at  the  battles 
of  Charleroi,  and  were  thus  early  in  the  field,  having 
been  rushed  over  with  a  promptitude  that  said  much 
for  French  mobilization  and  the  British  navy.  They 
were  also  praised  for  gallant  conduct  in  the  battle  of 
the  Marne,  and  later  in  wet  uncongenial  Flanders,  in 
the  German  battle  for  Calais  that  failed.  The  Moors 
distinguished  themselves  chiefly  in  Artois  and  in 
Champagne,  in  the  spring  and  autumn  of  1915. 

These  African  subjects  of  France,  who  disap- 
pointed German  hopes  and  not  only  did  not  rebel 
against  France  but  fought  for  her  on  her  own  soil, 
were  almost  all  volunteers.  In  Algeria  and  Tunisia 
the  Moslem  sharpshooter  troops  were  all  volunteers. 
A  measure  for  instituting  regular  military  service 
was  being  prepared  when  the  war  broke  out.  Jewish 
Algerians,  however,  hold  rights  of  French  citizenship 
and  are  liable  to  conscription  like  French  colonists, 
serving  chiefly  in  the  Zouaves.  There  are  many  na- 
tive officers  and  N.  C.  O.'s,  both  Moslem  and  Jewish, 
some  native  officers  having  passed  through  the  mili- 
tary schools  in  Paris.  Moorish  and  Senegalese  troops, 
"Moroccan  Sharpshooters"  and  "Senegalese  Sharp- 
shooters," were  and  are  all  volunteers,  with  a  few  na- 
134 


FRANCE 

tive  officers.  French  Congo  (busy  helping  to  conquer 
German  Cameroon)  and  Madagascar  levy  volunteer 
troops  were  kept  in  the  country.  Indo-China  native 
troops  put  down  desultory  risings  led  by  a  German 
agent  in  Laos  and  Yunnan. 


Ill 


French  organization  beyond  the  seas  thus  at  a  criti- 
cal hour  stood  the  supreme  test  well,  with  a  success 
surprising  indeed  to  a  great  many  of  the  French 
themselves,  many  of  whom  never  had  much  faith  in 
their  colonies.  A  handful  of  Frenchmen  have  been 
and  are  inspired  colonists,  with  a  dash  of  Livingstone's 
genius  for  dealing  with  alien  and  lower  races  and  win- 
ning them.  The  remainder  of  French  colonials  are 

in  Frs 


FRANCE 

ganization  would  probably  have  stood  no  test  at  all. 
Yet  it  is  quite  fair  and  logical — only  too  logical.  It 
is  liberal  as  no  other  colonial  system  of  any  colonial 
power  is.  France  grants  Parliamentary  representa- 
tion to  all  her  colonies;  no  other  colonial  power  does 
anything  of  the  kind.  Algeria,  reasonably,  of  course, 
an  old  colony  with  French  settlers  and  intelligent 
Arabs,  sends  seven  members  to  the  Paris  Chamber  and 
three  to  the  Paris  Senate.  Senegal,  Guiana,  the  rem- 
nants of  French  possessions  in  the  East  Indies,  and 
Cochin  China  return  among  them  four  members  in 
the  Paris  Chamber  of  Deputies,  and  Cochin  China 
returns  a  Senator  also.  All  the  deputies  are  elected 
by  universal  suffrage.  In  these  colonies,  French  col- 
onists, of  course,  have  the  franchise,  and  also  natives, 
but  only  those  who  are  "naturalized  French  citizens," 
and  such  naturalization  is  granted  only  with  good 
reason;  other  natives  are  French  subjects  not  citizens 
and  can  not  vote.  Thus,  in  Senegal  the  Senegalese 
have  not  much  to  do  with  the  elections  of  the  Sene- 
galese member  in  the  Paris  Parliament,  no  doubt  a 
wise  arrangement.  But  in  the  French  Antilles,  in 
Martinique,  in  Guadaloupe,  and  in  La  Reunion,  these 
being  "old  French  colonies,"  all  inhabitants  of  French 
nationality  are  French  citizens,  and  all  males,  white  or 
colored,  have  the  franchise.  And  an  election  there  is 
a  comic-opera  business,  and  the  member  returned,  who 
has  often  scarcely  set  eyes  on  his  constituency,  is  the 
first  to  smile  in  private  at  his  own  election. 

136 


FRANCE 

Centralization  for  French  unity  at  the  top,  tem- 
pered bj  local  human  knowledge;  that  is  French 
colonial  rule.  Throughout  French  colonies,  the  Code 
Napoleon  is  the  law  to  which  all  natives  who  have 
received  French  citizenship  are  amenable.  But  Mos- 
lem law,  Brahman  law  and  in  Indo-China  local  laws 
are  applied  in  civil  cases  by  the  French  courts.  Mu- 
nicipal government  in  Algeria,  Tunisia  and  Indo- 
China  is  for  a  considerable  part  entrusted  to  natives, 
and  even  also  in  French  West  Africa,  for  Lieutenant 
Dinah  Salifou,  son  of  a  nigger  ex-Kinglet  of  Soudan, 
enemy  to  the  French  (the  French  Colonial  Office  tells 
me),  was  Commissioner  of  Police  at  Brazzaville  in 
1914  when  the  war  broke  out.  He  afterward  fought 
for  France  and  won  the  Legion  of  Honor  for  gal- 
lantry. 

I  am  also  officially  informed  that  after  the  war 
native  rights  and  privileges  will  most  probably  be 
much  extended  in  Africa  in  reward  for  the  loyalty 
natives  showed  to  France.  I  well  believe  it.  For 
France  beyond  the  Seas  one  thing  stands  out  to-day. 
The  faults  and  formalism  and  officialism  of  her  colo- 
nial organization  do  not  count.  What  counts  is  that 
while  the  enemy  still  hold  Lille  her  colonial  empire 
from  Morocco  to  Tonkin  is  not  by  a  hair's  breadth 
shaken ;  and  that  Arabs,  Senegalese,  Moors  fought  for 
France  in  France  that  they  had  never  seen  before. 


CHAPTER  X 

ARMS IX  PEACE 


THE  need  to  be  well  armed  always  was  at  least  as 
essential  for  France  as  for  any  other  nation.  The 
position  of  France  among  the  nations  of  Europe  is 
a  simple  and  straight  proof  of  the  common-sense 
judgment  that  to  keep  its  place  a  people  must  first  be 
materially  strong.  The  German  Empire  founded  in 
1871  was  an  equally  immediate  proof  that  mastery  by 
material  strength  brings  material  gain,  and  the  mere 
fact  of  the  modern  German  Empire  exploded  the  fal- 
lacy that  no  war  is  profitable.  If  ever  French  arms 
were  clearly  weaker  than  German,  the  date  would  soon 
be  fixed  when  France  must  choose  between  being 
crushed  by  Germany  or  becoming  a  political  satellite 
of  Germany.  These  are  mere  facts  there  is  no  getting 
out  of.  When  one  considers  the  position  of  France  in 
Europe  one  ceases  to  consider  disarmament  even  as  an 
interesting  dream.  Balance  of  power  is  a  great  deal 
more  interesting.  Arms  are  a  vital  need  of  France 
and  are  bound  up  with  national  life.  Arms  and  the 
people,  arms  and  the  State  are  as  important  to  con- 
sider as  the  arms  themselves. 
138 


FRANCE 

At  Besan9on  and  Belfort  I  followed  an  autumn's 
grand  maneuvers  as  a  layman.  In  my  hotel  the  of- 
ficers' chauffeurs  dined.  They  were  a  Jew  banker's 
son,  a  duke's  son,  sons  of  lesser  millionaires  and  lesser 
grand  seigneurs,  sons  of  the  wealthy  bourgeoisie. 
They  were  privates,  one  or  two  of  them  corporals,  in 
the  army.  They  had  all  brought  their  own  motor- 
cars and  servants.  They  dined  well,  and  some  had 
their  actress  friends  with  them.  The  next  morning  at 
daybreak,  each  one  (his  servant  suppressed  and  told 
off  to  loaf)  took  his  car  and  awaited  orders  from  a 
captain  or  lieutenant  risen  from  the  humblest  bour- 
geoisie, when  not,  in  the  army  sense,  from  the  ranks, 
and  with  his  pay  of  three  or  four  hundred  francs  a 
month  to  live  on.  Banker's  son  and  duke's  son  became 
the  poor  church-mouse  captain's  or  subaltern's  chauf- 
feur and  drove  his  own  car  at  his  officer's  orders.  At 
dinner  a  few  days  afterward  I  heard  how  the  chauf- 
feurs, back  again  in  my  hotel,  had  ingeniously  man- 
aged to  stop  always  at  inns  that  would  not  strain 
their  officers'  purses.  They  made  no  sneers,  no  irony, 
no  jokes  among  themselves.  The  poor  plebeian  officer 
was  their  officer  to  them  still,  when  they  were  off  duty 
dining  with  the  best  Besan9on  champagne  and  their 
actress  friends.  I  have  never  understood  why  every 
democrat  in  every  country  does  not  urge  compulsory 
manhood  military  service. 

French  arms  and  the  people  are  indissolubly  bound, 
139 


FRANCE 

and  the  army  is  certainly  the  most  democratic  insti- 
tution in  France.  It  is  probably  the  most  democratic 
army  and  the  most  democratic  institution  in  the  world. 
That  it  is  so  is  little  understood  outside  France  and 
is  not  much  reflected  upon  by  Frenchmen  themselves. 
French  life  is  not  democratic.  The  social  scale  re- 
mains after  many  revolutions  as  sharply  marked  off 
as  ever,  and  lines  of  demarcation  grow  rather  deeper 
than  fainter  with  time.  While  old  castes  do  not  lose 
but  gain  prestige,  precisely  because  Republics  create 
no  new  nobility  of  title,  to  them  are  added  new  castes 
of  wealth  and  position,  and  by  the  same  process  the 
old  bourgeoisie  is  marked  off  from  the  parvenu  bour- 
geoisie; finally  and  simply  the  mere  outward  class 
differences  that  are  defined  by  more  or  less  money  are 
sharper  in  modern  France  than  they  ever  were  before. 
When  young  Frenchmen  of  twenty  (or  up  to  1914  of 
twenty-one)  are  called  to  serve  with  the  colors,  all 
these  differences  of  caste,  class,  wealth  disappear, 
more  completely  than  any  one  would  think  possible. 

In  my  Paris  university  days  my  fellow  students 
served  one  year  in  the  army;  younger  friends  served 
two,  and  the  sons  of  my  seniors  served  three.  The  ex- 
perience of  all  is  the  same.  The  recruit  ("le  bleu99}  seen 
off  by  fond  and  delicate  or  rough  mother  in  the  train 
that  will  take  him  to  his  first  barracks, — from  that 
moment  all  caste  and  class  is  wiped  out,  until  the  boy 
comes  back  an  "old"  soldier  discharged.  The  "thou" 
140 


s 


FRANCE 

of  the  French  language  begins  it,  and  every  soldier 
tutoye  another,  the  vous  being  between  officers  and 
men,  unless  a  paternal  colonel  say  tu,  without  of 
course  reciprocity.  Among  those  who  say  tu  to  one  an- 
other, absolute  equality,  without  a  shade  of  distinc- 
tion. "Thou  who  art  a  bourgeois  in  civilian  life,"  a 
navvy's  son  will  remark  by  the  way  to  a  banker's  son. 
The  banker's  son  is  naturally  expected  to  stand 
drinks,  he  has  no  other  privilege.  French  barracks 
have  some  of  the  spirit  of  the  English  public  school, 
but  spreading  far  more  widely,  spreading  indeed  over 
all  society.  In  the  school  a  boy  boasting  to  a  stock- 
broker's son  that  he  is  a  duke's  son  is  kicked ;  in  the 
barracks  a  bleu  boasting  to  a  bricklayer's  son  that 
he  is  a  duke's  son  or  that  his  father  keeps  a  chateau 
and  six  motor-cars  will  forever  after  be  told  off  on 
potato-peeling  duty,  the  trooper's  particular  dread. 
The  brotherhood  of  arms  has  become  a  real  fact  only 
in  modern  national  armies  and  is  nowhere  as  real,  I 
believe  from  all  I  have  seen  and  heard,  as  in  the  French 
army.  Fastidious  French  friends  of  mine  have  learned 
to  know  their  own  people  only  by  serving  in  the  army, 
and  some  have  kept  friendships  throughout  life  with 
barrack  mates.  One  of  them,  getting  out  of  his  motor- 
car at  the  Opera,  recognized  the  chauffeur  of  an- 
other car,  went  up  to  him,  shook  hands  with  a  "How 
art  thou,  mon  vieux?"  and  talked  barrack-room  recol- 
lections with  him  for  five  minutes,  after  which  one 
141 


FRANCE 

settled  to  wait  for  his  master,  and  the  other  went  to 
join  the  ladies  in  his  box.  Troopers  come  up  from  the 
East  to  Paris  together  on  leave,  one  is  met  at  the 
station  by  footman  and  chauffeur  with  the  car,  the 
other  by  his  mother  in  her  workaday  black  dress  with- 
out a  hat,  but  that  makes  no  shadow  of  difference  be- 
tween regimental  pals.  Before  the  sub-lieutenant  all 
troopers  are  on  exactly  the  same  footing.  "Soldier 
Rothschild,  peel  the  potatoes,"  "Soldier  Rohan,  wash 
out  the  lavatories,"  are  orders  that  attract  no  atten- 
tion whatever.  The  ordinary  trooper  would  be  as- 
tounded to  be  told  that  they  might  surprise  some 
people.  I  have  heard  of  peasant  or  workman  troopers 
learning  after  a  year  or  two  of  barracks  that  (for 
instance)  comrade  Caumont  was  trooper  de  Caumont 
La  Force,  heir  to  the  Duke  de  La  Force.  "Don't 
stuff  me,"  was  all  they  said  and  hit  comrade  Caumont 
in  the  pit  of  the  stomach.  Take  the  men  among  them- 
selves, or  take  the  behavior  of  the  officers  to  the  men : 
a  lieutenant  who  has  struggled  through  his  military 
schooling  by  scholarships  and  very  plain  living  and 
who,  perhaps  with  wife  and  child — the  wife  must  by 
the  army  regulations  have  brought  a  dowry  of  about 
one  thousand  francs  a  year — must  live  up  to  his  uni- 
form and  gold  stripes  on  seven  francs  or  so  a  day, 
treats  trooper  Rothschild  or  trooper  Rohan  both  with- 
out favor  and  without  jealousy,  and  neither  can  ever 
say  that  he  has  peeled  potatoes  more  often  than  in  his 
142 


FRANCE 

turn.  The  devotion  of  the  French  subaltern  officer  to 
his  sole  military  duty,  every  other  consideration  ob- 
literated, is  admirable.  The  equality  of  French  troop- 
ers before  the  subaltern  who  commands  them  is  per- 
fect. In  the  French  nation  compulsory  military 
service  has  been  the  most  thorough  school  of  dem- 
ocracy. 

II 

It  has  also  been  a  good  school  of  common  national 
feeling.  No  country  that  has  not  known  universal 
conscription  can  understand  what  a  national  free- 
masonry it  forms,  and  of  all  European  nations  I  think 
the  French  has  had  the  most  national  army.  Uni- 
versal military  service  welds  army  and  nation  into 
one.  All  able-bodied  Frenchmen  have  common  bar- 
rack-life memories  of  their  first  years  of  manhood; 
allusions  to  it,  jokes  about  it,  stage-plays  about  it,  the 
recall  of  its  slang,  appeal  to  all.  Such  and  such  a  farce 
about  barrack  life  has  run  thousands  of  nights  because 
the  peasant,  the  navvy,  the  aristocrat,  .the  artist,  the 
poet  can  all  honestly  laugh  at  it.  The  same  simple  joke 
tickles  them  all,  and  the  exquisite  artist  with  the  rest, 
because  it  takes  him  back  to  when  he  was  twenty  and 
one  of  an  army  of  fresh  healthy  twenty-year-olds,  in 
whom  art,  birth,  wealth,  loutishness,  vulgarity,  pov- 
erty, were  all  mixed. 

Not  only  social  castes  and  classes  of  thought  but 
143 


FRANCE 

historic  differences  of  race  and  clime  are  fused  by 
French  military  service.  The  War  Office  each  year 
scientifically  mixes  its  contingent  of  recruits  with  ex- 
traordinary care  and  thoroughness.  The  Breton  and 
the  Basque  go  together  to  Paris,  the  northern  miner 
goes  to  southern  villages,  the  Parisian  artisan  goes 
to  the  German  frontier.*  Think  what  an  education 
for  twenty-year-olds  this  mere  shuffling  of  places  dur- 
ing military  service  means.  The  garrison  of  Paris 
for  the  most  part  is  made  up  of  peasants  who  would 
not  have  left  their  fields  otherwise  and  may  never  see 
Paris  again.  The  garrisons  of  the  eastern  frontier, 
the  "Iron  division"  of  Nancy,  are  to  a  large  extent 
made  up  of  smart,  sharp,  hot-headed  Parisians  who 
would  never  otherwise  have  known  what  is  meant  by 
such  discipline  as  is  in  the  air  a  few  miles  from  the 
border.  Thus  for  several  generations  the  interpene- 
tration  of  all  elements  of  the  nation  has  been  helped 
by  military  service,f  and  the  purposes  of  French  na- 
tional defense  have  served  French  unity. 

*  For  many  years  under  the  Third  Republic  the  War  Of- 
fice's invariable  rule  was  to  send  each  recruit  to  serve  in 
a  region  distant  from  his  native  place.  "Recrutement  r£- 
gionar  afterward  altered  the  system,  but  the  old  rule  holds 
good  for  certain  provinces  and  for  large  towns.  Thus  Pa- 
risians never  serve  in  or  near  Paris  and  serve  usually  on 
the  German  frontier,  while  the  Paris  garrison  is  recruited 
from  distant  rural  districts. 

tFrom  the  Second  Empire  onward:  seven  years,  with  op- 
tion to  pay  for  substitutes;  five  years,  four  years,  with  many 
exemptions;  three  years,  with  reduction  to  one  year  for 
students  taking  university  degrees;  two  years  for  all  (1905 
law);  return  to  the  three  years  (1913),  this  time  for  all. 

144 


FRANCE 

The  same  course  has  not,  I  think,  been  followed  to 
the  same  extent  in  other  European  nations  where  mili- 
tary service  is  universal  and  compulsory.  It  was  said 
of  the  French  army  that  the  only  able-bodied  French- 
men who  did  not  know  what  conscription  was  were  the 
officers  of  the  army ;  amended  laws  have  changed  that 
and  officers  serve  a  year  as  privates  before  taking  their 
commission.  But  even  before  it  was  so  the  French 
officer  was  already  much  more  a  man  among  his  men 
than  in  most  other  armies.  There  has  not  been  m 
modern  times  a  military  officers'  caste  in  France. 
There  are  a  few  small  castes  as  in  all  armies,  the 
smart  aristocracy  that  goes  into  the  cavalry,  the 
scientific  intellectuals  of  the  engineers  and  artillery, 
the  country  aristocracy  that  chooses  the  navy ;  there 
is  no  officers'  caste  as  in  the  Prussian  army,  and  the 
French  officer  elbows  nobody  off  the  pavement,  not 
even  his  orderly.  He  feels  himself  honestly  and  sim- 
ply to  be  but  a  part  of  the  nation  armed  in  self- 
defense. 

The  solidarity  of  the  young  nation  in  arms  and  of 
the  older  nation  that  remains  in  the  reserves  and  may 
be  called  out,  of  officers  and  men,  of  castes  and  classes 
of  men  among  themselves,  is  the  measure  of  French 
military  patriotism.  By  it  the  importance  of  French 
anti-militarist  propaganda  may  be  judged.  Anti- 
militarism  in  France  has  been  active  and  violent,  it 
has  won  proselytes  in  the  trade  unions,  has  canvassed 
145 


FRANCE 

in  the  very  barracks  by  spoken  word  and  written 
tracts,  sometimes  with  apparent  success.  "If  war  be 
declared,  shoot  your  officers,  and  there  will  be  no  war," 
has  been  more  or  less  its  declaration  of  policy,  and  a 
Prime  Minister  of  France  several  times  over  (M. 
Briand)  told  French  workmen  (some  time,  of  course, 
before  he  thought  of  becoming  Prime  Minister)  to 
use  pikes  and  guns  against  their  officers  to  prevent 
war.  Words  was  all  that  amounted  to.  Words  had 
no  chance  against  the  fact  of  the  nation's  solidarity 
in  arms.  The  benefits  of  peace  are  apparent  to  all ; 
it  is  idle  to  talk  of  the  evils  of  armed  peace  to  a  people 
that  finds  in  arms,  not  through  warlike  purposes  but 
by  circumstances  and  national  character,  one  of  the 
strongest  links  that  bind  it  together.  Against  the 
reddest  anti-militarism  of  the  most  revolutionary 
navvy  must  be  set  off  that  he  was  the  pal  of  peasant 
and  millionaire  while  he  served  his  three  years.  Anti- 
militarism  weakens  modern  military  strength  by  split- 
ting it  after  the  pattern  of  civilian  society;  the 
strength  of  French  arms  precisely  is  that  they  unite 
France. 

Ill 

The  best  military  expert  in  the  world  could  not  in 

July,  1914,  have  undertaken  to  estimate  exactly  the 

fighting  value  of  the  French  army  or  of  any  modern 

army.     The  actual  worth  for  warfare  of  every  great 

146 


FRANCE 

European  standing  army,  as  of  every  great  navy,  was 
an  unknown  quantity.  No  one  could  foresee  certainly 
how  all  the  vast  and  elaborate  machinery  built  up  for 
years  to  that  end  would  work  when  put  to  the  test. 
No  conclusive  technical  comparisons  of  the  French 
and  German  armies  had  been  or  could  be  made.  The 
general  judgments  of  impartial  observers  were  that 
the  German  cavalry  was  superior,  the  French  artillery 
superior ;  that  the  German  infantry  was  better  disci- 
plined and  that  the  French  infantry  marched  better ; 
that  German  organization  at  the  top  was  better, 
French  intelligence  down  to  the  rank  and  file  greater. 
My  own  judgment  was  only  that  of  a  civilian  who 
had  observed  both  armies  in  peace-time.  Two  things 
indeed  struck  me:  German  organization  and  French 
intelligence.  At  army  maneuvers  the  quick  under- 
standing in  French  regiments  of  subalterns,  of  ser- 
geants and  corporals,  of  leading  privates,  is  remark- 
able; they  jump  to  fairly  complete  comprehension  of 
wide  strategic  movements  (still  utterly  enigmatic  at 
that  stage  to  the  layman)  and  are  a  conscious  part  in 
the  machine.  I  met  companies  of  sharpshooters,  Zou- 
aves they  were — a  score  of  privates  with  a  sergeant 
or  perhaps  a  sergeant-major  in  command — who  be- 
hind a  hedge  miles  from  the  headquarters  staff  and 
out  of  sight  of  and  seemingly  out  of  touch  with  their 
own  side,  could  give  a  logical  and  reasonable  account 
of  the  sham  battle  that  was  going  on.  At  German 
147 


FRANCE 

army  maneuvers  the  headquarters  staff  knows  every- 
thing ;  below,  no  one  knows  or  tries  to  know  anything, 
and  the  subaltern  is  blindly  uncomprehending,  the 
non-commissioned  officer  blankly  obedient,  the  private 
a  machine.  But  the  machinery  is  powerful.  The 
French  organize  up  to  a  point,  then  strangely  fail; 
or  rather,  the  other  way  about,  they  plan  well  and  the 
plan  is  carried  out  down  to  a  certain  point,  then  mis- 
carries. Anyhow  German  organization  is  pursued  and 
executed  with  a  complete  minuteness  not  found  on  the 
French  side.  A  slow  German  express  train  arrives  to 
the  second  at  each  suburban  station ;  a  French  express 
flies  at  twenty  miles  more  an  hour,  and  two  or  three 
times  a  week  comes  up  a  half  an  hour  late,  owing  to 
causes  unexplained.  French  and  German  military 
strength  are  perhaps  the  hare  and  the  tortoise,  one 
thought  in  peace-time,  but  no  one  knew  whether  the 
slow-witted  tortoise  would  outwit  the  quick-witted 
hare,  and  military  experts  knew  no  more  than  any 
one  else. 

French  guns  and  French  gunners;  the  astonishing 
smartness  with  which  a  French  battery  uncouples  and 
brings  its  guns  into  action,  or  the  skill  with  which  it 
will  thread  its  way  at  full  gallop  through  an  army, 
over  crowded  roads  or  through  plowed  fields;  the 
ingenuity  of  French  artillery  officers  like  the  inventor 
of  the  hydropneumatic  recoil  brake,  or  the  plain  artil- 
lery captain  who  thought  of  (and  never  got  anything 
148 


FRANCE 

for  it)  the  simple  and  cheap  device  adapted  to  shells 
which  enabled  existing  French  field  guns  to  compete 
successfully  with  new  German  field  guns  and  which 
saved  the  French  War  Office  eighty  or  one  hundred 
million  francs;  the  intelligence  of  officers  and  of  the 
rank  and  file ;  the  extraordinary  patriotism  and  (what 
is  more)  common  sense  with  which  the  people  who  sup- 
ply that  rank  and  file  accepted  the  return  to  the  three 
years'  military  service  after  nearly  nine  years  of  the 
lesser  burthen,  an  increase  of  duty  to  the  country 
which  can  be  appreciated  only  by  those  who  have 
known  or  watched  compulsory  military  service,  and 
have  seen  what  it  means  to  take  a  boy  beginning  life 
away  from  his  field,  his  business,  his  trade  or  his  pro- 
fession, not  for  two  but  for  three  years  at  twenty; 
the  simple  sensible  acceptance  of  the  return  to  the 
three  years  by  the  country  merely  as  a  question  of 
arithmetic  and  because  there  was  no  other  way  of 
keeping  pace  with  the  ever-swelling  armed  hordes  east 
of  the  Rhine — all  these  were  the  French  assets  against 
German  organization  and  German  numbers. 

Arms  and  the  nation  have  served  each  other  faith- 
fully under  the  Third  Republic.  It  has  been  a  long, 
exacting,  costly  strain,  and  will  grow  a  greater  one, 
not  a  lesser.  Neither  the  army  nor  the  nation  has 
grudged  pains  or  money  to  win  victory.  The  navy 
alone  has  been  sacrificed.  France  by  her  geographical 
position  should  have  been  the  first  naval  power  on  the 
149 


FRANCE 

Continent,  and  it  is  a  good  many  years  since  she  lost 
the  second  place.  Her  strength  on  sea  is  kept  up  by 
the  tradition  of  old  families,  who  make  naval  officers 
of  their  sons,  and  of  the  fisherfolk  of  Normandy, 
Brittany  and  to  some  extent  of  the  Mediterranean 
coast,  who  always  serve  in  the  navy  and  remain  in  the 
naval  reserves.  The  nation  has  come  to  feel  that  its 
fate  in  European  fights  will  always  be  settled  on  land. 
French  national  existence  depends  upon  the  French 
army. 

IV 

The  standing,  or  rather  the  "active,"  army  is  the 
first  French  fighting  line,  stretched  for  the  most  part 
along  the  eastern  frontier  of  France,  and  the  reserve 
of  the  army  is  all  the  male  able-bodied  French  nation 
up  to  middle  age.  But  the  French  nation  has  some- 
times had  to  consider  its  standing  army  apart  from 
itself;  not  the  army  but  the  officers'  corps,  not  the 
latter  but  cliques  among  the  latter,  not  in  fact  the 
latter  at  all  but  factions  of  politicians  trying  to  use 
them.  In  this  narrow  sense,  arms  and  the  nation,  or 
arms  and  the  State  have  been  at  times  separate  and  a 
political  dualism. 

Under  the  Third  Republic  no  officer  and  no  soldier 

has  the  franchise ;  no  officer  can  vote  until  retired  from 

the  army  and  no  other  citizen  can  vote  until  he  has 

completed  his  term  of  compulsory   military   service. 

150 


FRANCE 

The  second  Empire  gave  the  army,  officers  and  men, 
the  vote  for  the  plebiscites  which  were  supposed  to 
prove  that  the  rule  of  Napoleon  III  was  founded  upon 
the  people's  will ;  the  army  as  a  body  was  ordered  to 
vote  Yes  for  the  Empire  and  almost  without  a  dis- 
sentient voice  obeyed.  This  use  of  military  power  for 
political  purposes  availed  Napoleon  III  little  in  the 
last  resort,  for  the  second  and  last  plebiscite  was  taken 
and  showed  an  enormous  majority  for  the  Empire  a 
few  months  before  the  crash  of  the  Franco-Prussian 
War,  Sedan  and  the  fall  of  the  Empire. 

Under  the  Third  Republic  there  have  been  attempts, 
never  yet  successful,  to  use  the  army  to  political  ends. 
It  is  obvious  that  in  a  democracy  keeping  up  a  stand- 
ing army  which  consists  of  a  permanent  corps  of  of- 
ficers whose  sole  profession  for  life  is  arms,  and,  for 
the  rest,  of  the  whole  male  youth  of  the  nation  in  its 
first  years  of  manhood,  the  danger  to  the  State  of  po- 
litical currents  of  opinion  in  the  army  must  be  great. 
On  the  other  hand  national  conscription  is  precisely 
a  safeguard,  for  the  youth  that  forms  the  rank  and 
file,  if  it  show  any  political  movements  of  opinion  at 
all,  must  reflect  almost  exactly  those  of  the  nation, 
being  the  total  youth  of  the  nation.  The  corps  of 
officers  remains,  which  in  a  sense  is  cut  off  from  the 
nation,  being  the  only  voluntary  professional  soldiers 
and  as  such  excluded  from  the  franchise  and  never 
possessing  therefore  a  voice  in  the  conduct  of  the 
151 


FRANCE 

nation's  affairs.  Political  questions  involving  arms 
and  the  nation  have  thus  concerned  only  the  corps  of 
officers.  Two  difficulties  have  been  met  with  by  the 
Third  Republic  in  this  way :  the  ever-present,  if  dor- 
mant, French  national  love  of  autocracy,  and  the  in- 
fluence of  the  Church,  All  political  crises  in  which  the 
army,  represented  by  the  corps  of  officers,  seemed  to 
assume  an  irregular  voice  in  the  State  arose  from  one 
of  those  or  from  connected  causes.  Boulangism  and 
the  Dreyfus  Case  were  the  chief  of  these  crises.  A 
general  was  put  up  by  a  political  faction  to  try  to  be 
a  second  Bonaparte,  and  if  the  mettle  had  been  in  him 
the  army  possibly  would  have  risen  and  borne  him  to 
something  like  a  first  Consulship  and  perhaps  an  im- 
perial throne.  Over  a  quarrel  whether  a  Jew  captain 
was  wrongly  or  rightly  convicted  of  treason  a  political 
faction  (it  was  more  or  less  the  same  faction  against 
the  Jew)  stirred  a  part  of  the  corps  of  officers  up  to 
the  honest  belief  that  they  were  the  real  France  and 
charged  with  the  mission  to  save  France.  With  the 
former  crisis  the  Church  had  little,  with  the  second 
much,  to  do.  Boulangism  was  a  mild  modern  version 
of  an  attempt  by  a  Pretorian  guard  upon  the  State. 
In  the  Dreyfus  Case  crisis  religious  differences  much 
deeper  were  called  up ;  the  same  worked  in  the  lesser 
crisis  brought  by  the  disestablishment  of  the  Churches 
by  the  Republic. 

In  every-day  French  regimental  life,  religion  plays 
152 


FRANCE 

no  part.  No  one  has  ever  met  a  French  trooper  whose 
religious  belief  affected  his  position  in  his  regiment, 
nor  a  French  officer  whose  behavior  toward  his  men 
was  influenced  by  his  or  their  religions.  French  mili- 
tary service  is  as  undenominational  as  it  is  democratic ; 
more  than  that,  it  is  completely  free  from  all  religious 
and  also  anti-religious  bias.  In  a  long  acquaintance 
with  Frenchmen  who  have  served  I  have  never  heard 
of  aught  but  strict  impartiality  toward  all  faiths  and 
toward  unfaith  as  well. 

Where  religion  and  politics  have  intruded  upon 
regimental  life,  they  have  influenced  only  the  corps  of 
officers  and  only  a  small  part  of  that.  Before  the 
Dreyfus  Case  crisis  broke  out  the  political  Church  had 
obtained  some  hold  over  the  army  through  the  Head- 
quarters Staff,  where  it  counted  many  supporters. 
The  public  schools  run  by  Jesuit  and  other  fathers 
train  boys  for  the  military  officers'  schools,  and  as 
is  well  known  retain  great  influence  over  their  old 
boys  in  after  life.  When  the  French  State  disestab- 
lished the  Churches,  the  inventories  of  Church  prop- 
erty, ordered  as  much  for  the  sake  of  the  Church  as 
for  that  of  the  State,  led  to  a  few  disturbances,  and 
troops  being  called  out  to  put  down  some  of  these, 
some  officers  threw  up  their  commissions  rather  than 
command  their  men  in  such  a  juncture.  So  much  for 
Church  influence  over  the  army.  Between  whiles,  in 
the  reaction  after  the  Dreyfus  Case,  the  War  Office 
153 


FRANCE 

became  "Anti-Clerical"  after  being  "Clerical" ;  that  is 
to  say,  the  Headquarters  Staff,  the  Church  influence 
being  thrown  out,  was  run  by  Anti-Church  politicians. 
For  a  time  a  small  party  in  the  corps  of  officers,  as 
bigoted  against  the  Church  as  any  Church  party  could 
be  for  it,  tried  to  rule  the  army  politically ;  it  was  the 
time  of  the  "fiches,"  secret  reports  drawn  up  about 
any  officer  who  went  to  church,  which  were  the  violent 
retribution  for  the  reporting  under  a  previous  rule 
of  officers  who  did  not  go  to  church.  This  is  the  sum 
of  the  political  influences  with  which  the  Republic  has 
had  to  count  in  estimating  her  armed  strength.  They 
affect  only  the  corps  of  officers,  and  only  a  small  part 
of  that.  The  men  are  untouched,  for  the  obvious  rea- 
son that  they  are  an  epitome  of  the  nation,  and  that 
what  the  nation  wants,  they  must  want.  An  Anti- 
Republican  political  move  in  the  army  would  prove 
that  the  nation  had  had  enough  of  the  Republic. 

At  the  same  time  political  influences  in  the  army, 
though  small,  are  important.  The  Republic  always 
has  to  remember  two  things  regarding  her  army :  the 
lurking  French  fondness  for  an  autocracy,  naturally 
felt  by  a  part  of  the  corps  of  French  officers  as  the 
feeling  is  common  to  all  military  men  in  the  world ; 
the  political  power  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church, 
which  through  its  schools  influences  the  army,  and 
which  would,  whenever  it  could,  use  that  power  against 
the  secular  State.  The  French  State  has  a  mighty 
154 


H  O, 


~     ° 

CJ  _2 


c« 


FRANCE 

weapon  in  its  army;  it  must  always  guard  against 
that  weapon  being  used  against  itself.  But  the  Re- 
public which  is  to-day  the  French  State  just  keeps 
an  eye  open;  the  army  is  loyal  to  the  Republic.  I, 
for  one,  have  not  met  a  French  officer  whom  I  dared 
ask  whether  he  would  remain  loyal  to  the  Republic 
without  insulting  him.  Paul  Deroulede,  a  great- 
hearted patriot  with  little  sense,  tried  to  lead  on  Gen- 
eral Roget  at  the  head  of  his  brigade  after  the  funeral 
of  Felix  Faure  to  capture  the  Presidential  palace  of 
the  Elysee,  and  the  general  rode  on  to  barracks,  where 
he  had  Deroulede  at  last  arrested.  If  there  come  an 
upheaval  in  France  and  a  return  to  autocracy,  which 
is  the  natural  medium  for  all  who  seek  adventures  in 
arms,  at  least  half  the  corps  of  officers,  I  believe, 
will  have  gallantly  and  most  disinterestedly  stood  up 
for  the  Republic.  What  the  rank  and  file  will  have 
done  the  issue  will  have  shown,  the  army  being  the 
nation. 


Within  the  memory  of  living  Frenchmen,  the  mili- 
tary burden  of  the  nation  has  changed  from  seven 
years'  service  with  purchase  of  substitutes,  five  and 
three  years  with  exemptions  and  with  one  year  service 
for  college  students,  to  two,  then  three  year,  service 
for  all  able-bodied  men  without  any  exceptions  what- 
ever. The  1913  law,  instituting  compulsory  and 
155 


FRANCE 

strictly  universal  military  service  for  three  years  (in 
practise  thirty  months),  marks  probably  the  limit  of 
French  military  strength.  Two  years  and  a  half  out 
of  the  first  manhood  of  all  her  youth — plowman,  ar- 
tisan, student,  artist — perhaps  is  the  top  price  it  is 
really  worth  a  country's  while  to  pay  for  military 
power.  Will  it  ever  pay  France  to  make  yet  greater 
sacrifices  for  the  sake  of  numbers  in  the  field?  The 
burden  of  the  thirty  months'  service  as  it  is  will  weigh 
more  heavily  than  is  yet  perceived.  German  observers 
to  my  knowledge  looked  forward  to  a  decline  in  the 
level  of  national  French  education.  In  Germany  the 
university  student  served  one  year  in  the  army,  as 
the  French  student  did  before  the  two  years'  serv- 
ice was  instituted;  in  France  the  student  at  twenty 
must  interrupt  his  studies  for  at  least  two  and  a  half 
years,  returning  to  the  university  after  that  to  take 
his  degree.  At  present  the  burden  for  France  is  un- 
avoidable. Can  it  ever  be  altered?  The  Socialist 
party  believes  or  professes  to  believe  in  a  national 
militia  on  the  Swiss  plan:  each  man  having  his  own 
rifle,  a  first  period  of  military  service  of  a  few  months, 
yearly  practise  of  a  week  or  so  afterward.  Every 
military  student  perceives  at  once  that  by  the  time 
such  a  militia  had  been  mobilized  a  great  well-organ- 
ized standing  army  like  the  German  would  have  in- 
vaded half  of  France.  The  French  must  go  on  bear- 
ing their  burden.  The  burden  is  a  life  and  death 
156 


FRANCE 

duty  for  France  in  case  of  conflict ;  in  times  of  peace 
it  is  not  solely  a  burden.  A  year  or  two  of  military 
service  does  every  boy  good.  I  have  tried  to  show 
that  in  France  military  service  brings  men,  classes 
and  the  nation  together,  is  national,  democratic  and 
human. 


CHAPTER  XI 


ARMS IX  WAK 


THE  chapter  on  French  arms  in  peace  was  written 
early  in  1914,  when  the  European  war  seemed  less 
probable  than  it  had  seemed  in  1911  and  1909.  I 
left  the  chapter  unchanged.  French  arms  in  war  kept 
what  they  promised  in  peace,  and  kept  more  than 
their  promise. 

A  nation  to  arms — has  it  ever  been  such  a  reality? 
French  military  service  in  peace  was  national,  demo- 
cratic and  human.  The  best  friends  of  France,  among 
whom  I  count  myself,  never  hoped  that  it  would  stand 
the  test  of  war  so  well.  The  order  of  mobilization 
found  not  a  man  in  a  thousand  even  lazy,  and  the 
whole  nation  took  arms,  as  on  paper  it  was  meant  to 
do.  But  had  the  paper  ever  been  tested  before,  and 
has  any  such  national  army  existed  before  in  history  ? 
Every  man  took  his  post,  every  man  put  on  his  uni- 
form, and  with  his  civilian  clothes  shed  utterly  what- 
ever his  civilian  life  had  been. 

I  feel  I  must  hammer  the  notion  of  democratic  mili- 
tary service  into  the  minds  of  those  who  do  not  know 
what  it  is.  The  order  of  general  mobilization  is 
158 


FRANCE 

posted  up.  My  friend  the  First  Secretary  of  Em- 
bassy, both  the  perfectly  modern  diplomatist  and  a 
courtly  gentleman  of  an  ancient  French  family,  is 
ipso  facto  a  sergeant  of  artillery ;  his  young  subordi- 
nate, the  same  pleasant  type  of  man,  is  sergeant-ma- 
jor; a  third  diplomatist  joins  us  who  is  clamping 
about  in  the  Quai  d'Orsay  rooms  testing  his  regimental 
boots, — he  is  a  private.  Down-stairs,  in  the  lobby,  my 
different  friend,  the  chief  footman,  tells  me  his  son 
has  just  been  gazetted  a  sub-lieutenant,  having  come 
out  of  Saint  Cyr  military  school — in  the  Line,  "the 
Cavalry  would  not  have  been  quite  our  set,"  says  the 
father.  My  friend  the  chief  footman's  son  may  very 
possibly  have  under  his  orders  my  friends  the  Secre- 
taries of  Embassy.  If  other  friends  of  mine,  ministers 
plenipotentiary  and  ambassadors,  were  young  enough, 
they  might  well  be  under  his  orders,  too.  At  the  cafe, 
my  friend  the  head  waiter  goes  to-morrow  as  a  private, 
and  the  second  head  waiter  as  a  captain.  It  would 
have  surprised  any  Frenchman  on  August  %,  1914, 
to  learn  that  this  could  surprise  any  one.  My  friend 
the  First  Secretary  of  Embassy  went  through  all  the 
first  battles  of  the  war,  from  Alsace  to  Charleroi,  from 
the  Marne  to  Ypres,  with  gallantry,  and  the  whole 
Quai  d'Orsay  is  proud  that  he  was  promoted  first  to 
sergeant-major,  then  to  sub-lieutenant  on  the  battle- 
field, thus  being  now  the  equal  of  the  chief  footman's 
son.  Writing  from  among  the  French  nation  in  arms, 
159 


FRANCE 

I  can  scarcely  make  it  understood  how  natural  these 
things  are  to  them.  I  shall  never  forget  the  joy  with 
which  the  Secretary  of  Embassy  told  me  he  would 
start  as  a  sergeant  on  a  horse  pulling  a  75  mm. 
gun.  The  nation  is  in  arms,  everything  else  disap- 
pears, with  a  completeness  which  no  one  outside  can 
really  grasp.  A  late  Minister  of  War  is  a  sub-lieu- 
tenant in  a  trench,  and  prouder  than  of  anything  else 
in  his  career  to  be  promoted  lieutenant.  A  million- 
aire banker  on  a  motor  bicycle  runs  errands  for  his 
sergeant,  a  bricklayer.  Two  troopers  are  in  a  trench 
on  Christmas  Eve  and  one  says,  "A  year  ago  I  was 
supping  at  the  Cafe  de  Paris."  "I  know,  I  was  the 
runner  who  fetched  your  motor-car,  old  chap." 

For  these  French  soldiers  when  fighting  are  not  dem- 
ocratic and  brothers  on  principle  and  by  rule.  They 
feel  it.  The  Third  French  Republic's  army  in  the 
Great  War  realized  the  perfect  brotherhood  of  arms. 
From  all  that  soldiers  of  all  countries  have  told  me, 
I  do  not  think  that  in  any  other  fighting  force  it  is 
quite  so  true  that  a  man's  a  man  for  a'  that.  There 
is  a  story  of  the  United  States  Navy  in  peace-time: 
a  lieutenant,  given  an  order,  did  exactly  the  contrary 
and  came  out  on  top.  "Smart  young  chap,"  was  all 
his  commander  said.  In  the  British  Navy  he  would 
have  been  court-martialed  first  of  all.  Discipline  in 
the  long  run  probably  answers  best,  but  there  was 
something  human  in  that  American  commander.  The 
160 


An  officer  at  the  front  in  his  dug  out 


Drawn    by   Le   Blant 


FRANCE 

least  human  seems  to  be  the  German  officer  toward  his 
men.  German  officers  taken  prisoners  by  the  French 
have,  in  innumerable  cases,  bullied  and  struck  their 
own  fellow  countrymen,  fellow  soldiers  and  fellow  pris- 
oners, who  were  mere  privates.  I  saw  many  exam- 
ples in  French  hospitals  and  prisoners'  camps.  Here 
is  just  one.  To  a  French  hospital  where  French  and 
German  officers  and  soldiers  were  cared  for,  an  un- 
expected batch  of  wounded  German  soldiers  was 
brought  at  night.  The  wards  were  fairly  full ;  the 
officers  had  rooms  to  themselves.  The  old  French 
surgeon-major  sent  round  to  say,  "Would  Messrs,  the 
Officers  kindly  be  moved  from  their  rooms  to  allow 
the  fresh  wounded  to  be  provided  for?"  "Why,  of 
course,"  said  the  French  officers,  and  went  or  were 
carried  to  other  wards  where  soldiers  lay.  The  Ger- 
man officers  (wounded  prisoners  cared  for  by  their 
captors)  refused  insolently  to  make  way  for  mere 
German  privates  and  had  to  be  removed  by  force. 
German  officers  taken  prisoners  and  put  in  third-class 
railway  carriages,  sometimes,  it  may  be  confessed,  with 
glee  by  their  captors,  still  hectored  it  over  the 
wretched  German  private  (often  glad  himself  to  be 
a  prisoner)  and  frequently  struck  him.  At  railway 
buffets,  eye-glass  in  eye,  they  clamored  for  cham- 
pagne. Hearing  which,  a  Turco  tied  one  up,  put  his 
trooper's  saucepan  on  his  head  and  thus  drove  him. 
In  the  whole  war,  not  a  single  example  of  human  de- 
161 


FRANCE 

votion  from  a  German  private  to  his  officer  has  been 
recorded,  even  officially  in  Germany.  Perfect  iron  dis- 
cipline, which  is  very  useful;  not  a  trace  of  give  and 
take  human  discipline,  which  is  useful  also. 

The  British  officer  tries  to  be  and  is  a  disciplinarian, 
but  he  could  not  be  a  German  officer  if  he  tried.  Im- 
agine him,  because  he  is  an  officer,  refusing  a  bed  to 
a  wounded  Tommy.  But  Tommy,  because  he  is 
Tommy,  remains  Tommy  to  the  officer.  In  khaki  one 
can  hardly  tell  the  Commander-in-Chief  from  Private 
Atkins.  One  must  wait  to  hear  them  talk,  and  then 
a  gulf  divides  Tommy  from  his  officers,  a  social  gulf, 
the  widest  social  gulf  in  England.  The  gulf  nar- 
rows, as  the  British  army  increases,  but  it  is  not 
closed  yet.  Every  one  enlisted,  and  Tommy  was  oc- 
casionally Sir  Thomas  Blank,  Bart.,  but  Tommy  re- 
mained in  his  quiddity.  Not  this  war,  or  any  of  the 
wars  that  will  doubtless  follow,  will  much  change  the 
British  Tommy  and  his  officer,  both  perfect  and  im- 
mutable, the  one  a  rank,  brave,  simple,  cheery  soldier, 
the  other  a  very  gallant  gentleman — and  a  bit  of  a 
snob. 

The  French  officer  at  his  best  is  both  a  leader  and 
a  comrade.  The  Prussian  Junker  is  a  born  com- 
mander, with  the  instinct  of  authority  in  the  blood; 
at  his  best,  he  treats  his  men  as  a  hard  but  just  mas- 
ter treats  his  servants,  and  in  his  eyes  a  private  of 
the  Landsturm  who  was  a  lawyer  or  a  professor  in 
162 


FRANCE 

civilian  life  is  exactly  one  unit  in  the  herd  of  which 
he  is  the  autocrat,  nothing  more.  The  British  offi- 
cer is  used  to  command,  with  the  natural  pull  of  the 
gently  over  the  roughly  nurtured  man,  and  he  com- 
mands like  a  gentleman,  making  at  his  best,  friends, 
and  devoted  friends,  of  his  men,  but  always  humble 
friends,  always  with  something  akin  to  his  pet  fox 
terrier  or  brindled  bull  about  them.  Between  the 
French  officer  who  has  authority  and  the  French 
trooper  who  intelligently  accepts  authority  there  is  a 
comradeship  from  man  to  man.  The  officer  with  no 
real  leadership  in  him  who  would  have  tried  to  lead 
would  have  come  to  disaster  at  the  French  front ;  there 
bluff  and  bullying  were  no  good.  The  officer  who 
had  authority  and  had  nothing  else  jeopardized  his 
men.  What  the  French  army  did  was  done  by  offi- 
cers and  men  who  understood  one  another  as  officers 
and  men  seldom  have.  Blind  obedience  is  not  to  be 
had  of  French  troops.  One  wonders  that  it  is  to  be 
had  of  any  conscript  troops,  in  which  the  sergeant 
may  be  by  education  his  officer's  master.  No  French 
officer  could  have  hoped  to  send  his  men  in  serried 
ranks  singing  to  slaughter,  as  German  commanders 
did  on  the  banks  of  the  Yser.  French  officers,  in- 
deed, would  not  have  had  the  heart  to  do  it;  French 
troops  would  not  have  had  the  blind  courage  to  go. 
The  French  died  as  gallantly  as  any,  but  they  had 
to  know  something  of  the  reason  why.  Discipline  did 
163 


FRANCE 

not  fail — or  would  they  have  done  what  they  did? 
But  it  was,  one  may  say,  a  reasoned  discipline,  rea- 
soned like  everything  French. 

This  was  the  French  trooper,  the  best,  the  typical 
French  trooper :  a  mechanic,  say,  or  an  artisan,  aged 
twenty-five  or  thirty,  seasoned  by  his  three  years' 
military  service  five  or  ten  years  before,  seasoned  also 
by  shrewd  living  and  deft  practise  of  his  handicraft ; 
he  was  called  up  on  August  1  and  he  came,  he  was 
perhaps  an  anti-militarist  or  merely  a  Pacifist  Social- 
ist before,  but  he  came,  his  country  was  attacked  and 
he  came,  and  none  readier  to  smash  the  Boches  than 
he,  all  his  wits  spent  on  politics  and  his  business  be- 
fore, now  intent  on  his  country's  cause ;  he  came,  and 
having  reported  himself,  looked  at  his  commanding 
officer.  The  officer  had  passed  ten  years  in  a  military 
school,  the  Staff  College  and  garrisons,  in  the  tedious 
peace  life  of  a  professional  soldier,  and  here  he  was, 
commanding  men  called  up  to  war  from  their  trades 
to  fight  now,  to-morrow,  perhaps  to-day.  To  fight 
for  their  country,  of  course,  all  knew  that,  but  how? 
If  the  trooper  looked  at  his  officer,  the  officer  looked 
at  the  trooper.  When  they  understood  each  other  the 
steel  of  the  French  army  was  tempered.  They  un- 
derstood each  other  forever  after.  Mere  discipline 
henceforth  would  have  been  absurd.  The  young  lieu- 
tenant was  the  father  of  his  men,  five  or  ten  years 
older  than  he.  A  sergeant,  a  corporal  could  command 
164 


FRANCE 

the  devotion  of  the  men  in  his  trench.  Men  acknowl- 
edged chieftainship  with  their  eyes  open,  and  having 
accepted,  obeyed  to  the  death.  Where  this  freely  con- 
sented comradeship  of  leaders  and  led  was  not,  dis- 
aster came.  If  it  had  not  prevailed,  the  battle  of 
the  Marne  could  not  have  been  won,  and  France 
would  have  been  lost.  When  General  Joffre  said, 
"Now  is  the  time  to  stand  and  die  rather  than  yield," 
it  was  the  comradeship  of  French  arms  that  stood  and 
won.  What  made  that  stupendous  retrieval  was  above 
all  the  French  soldier  ready  to  die  for  his  friend, 
his  officer.  A  lieutenant,  slightly  wounded,  was  car- 
ried to  the  field  hospital.  He  found  there  a  severely 
wounded  trooper  and  spent  all  his  time  caring  for 
him.  "Your  brother  ?"  asked  the  chief  surgeon.  "No, 
my  orderly  servant."  That  is  what,  among  other 
things,  won  for  the  Allies  the  battle  of  the  Marne. 


II 


The  battle  of  the  Marne  saved  Paris  and  France. 
It  was  improvised.  All  the  war  was  improvised  by 
France.  All  she  did  in  the  war  was  impromptu  ex- 
cept her  mobilization.  Fighting  France  kept  more 
than  all  her  promises.  French  military  organization 
kept  scarcely  more  than  one:  it  was  caught  without 
sufficient  heavy  artillery,  without  anything  like  ade- 
quate provision  in  motor  transport,  without  proper 
165 


FRANCE 

fortifications  in  the  right  places,  without  the  shadow 
of  a  plan  of  strategic  defense  against  the  particular 
attack  the  enemy  made.  French  mobilization  almost 
alone  succeeded  of  all  the  French  army's  prearranged 
plans.  That  worked  extraordinarily  well,  so  well  that 
one  could  hardly  believe  it.  German  papers  had  hu- 
morous descriptions  of  the  pioupiou  waiting  in  Rennes, 
where  he  found  his  red  trousers,  while  his  tunic  was  be- 
ing sent  him  from  Bordeaux,  his  boots  from  Lyons,  his 
rifle  from  Paris,  his  cartridges  from  Marseilles.  This 
was  only  the  gay  German  fancy.  French  mobilization 
worked  as  smoothly  as  the  best  machine  made  in  Ger- 
many. Frenchmen  themselves  wondered  at  it.  From 
the  midnight  of  Saturday,  August  1,  1914,  the  ma- 
chine moved  without  a  hitch  till  all  fighting  France 
was  mobilized.  Scores  of  friends  of  mine,  officers 
either  on  active  service  or  retired,  checked  it  minutely 
and  none  found  a  mistake.  One  traveled  up  and  down, 
watch  in  hand,  on  a  railway  line  which  he  knew  well, 
having  in  his  youth  prepared  the  mobilization  plans 
for  that  line:  each  troop  train  passed  a  given  point 
at  the  exact  time  it  had  been  scheduled  to  pass  in 
the  plans  drawn  up  years  before.  Another  had  built 
a  strategic  railway  line  to  be  used  only  for  mobiliza- 
tion: the  troop  trains  followed  to  the  second  the  time 
table  he  had  drawn  up  for  the  line,  that  had  scarcely 
ever  been  used  before.  The  French  railways  (every 
railway  servant  mobilized  instantly  and  turned  into 
166 


FRANCE 

a  soldier  by  a  badge  on  his  arm,  though  kept  in  his 
ordinary  post)  bettered  all  the  hopes  of  the  Head- 
quarters Staff  or  any  one  else  had  of  them:  no  fuss, 
no  rush,  not  a  hitch,  it  was  the  perfectly  oiled  ma- 
chine. No  trains  de  luxe  ever  ran  so  accurately  as 
the  troop  trains  bringing  a  million  men  to  the  frontier 
in  a  fortnight.  It  was  a  surprise  to  most  Frenchmen 
and  to  all  tourists.  While  we  had  for  years  been 
rushing  haphazard  in  quick  but  spasmodic  French 
raplde  trains,  a  careful  schedule  of  innumerable  steady 
punctual  troop  trains  for  war  had  been  drawn  up 
"for  the  day,"  and  when  the  day  came,  the  schedule 
was  acted  upon  with  a  machine-like  regularity  our  best 
Riviera  or  Rome  Expresses  never  knew.  The  trains 
took  the  men,  and  they,  on  arrival,  found  uniforms, 
boots,  knapsacks,  rifles,  cartridges,  ready  for  each 
one;  the  trains  took  them  on  again,  this  time  to  the 
front.  The  "not  a  gaiter  button  missing"  of  Marshal 
Leboeuf  in  1870  really  was  in  191 4  the  truth,  and 
not  a  word  of  brag  about  it.  The  obscure  officers  who 
for  years  planned,  each  for  his  humble  part  of  clerk 
or  accountant,  the  mobilization  of  the  Third  French 
Republic's  army  and  its  transport  by  railway,  with- 
out a  word  of  praise  then  and  without  a  word  of  rec- 
ognition afterward,  deserved  well  of  their  country. 

This  French  success  in  organization  surprised 
France  herself.  It  was  exactly  what  every  one,  and 
she  too,  had  expected  she  would  fail  in.  Luckily  for 

167 


FRANCE 

her  she  did  not;  it  would  have  been  all  up  with  her 
if  she  had.  As  it  was,  she  was  completely  outmaneu- 
vered  and  outwitted  during  the  first  month  of  the 
campaign  by  superior  German  strength  and  prepared- 
ness; had  there  been  one  hitch  in  her  mobilization, 
even  her  unconquerable  spirit  could  not  have  made 
miracles  and  the  astounding  rally  of  the  defending 
armies  against  the  invaders  would  have  been  impos- 
sible. 

Ill 

The  campaign  from  the  middle  of  August  to  the 
middle  of  September,  1914,  from  Charleroi  to  the 
Marne,  will  be  remembered  in  military  history  as  one 
of  the  most  dramatic,  in  its  swiftness  and  the  sudden- 
ness of  its  rightabouts,  ever  recorded.  The  extreme 
French  right,  composed  of  half  the  best  French  troops, 
uselessly  and  prematurely  attacked  in  Alsace,  which 
the  German  advance  ignored.  The  French  center,  the 
remainder  of  the  best  French  active  army,  was  on 
the  right  bank  of  the  Meuse,  almost  unoccupied.  The 
French  left,  reserves  just  taken  from  shops  and  count- 
ing-houses, was  not  yet  in  touch  with  the  then  small 
British  army  just  landed  from  England.  The 
strength  and  flower  of  the  German  army,  eighteen 
army  corps  or  so,  having  taken  Liege,  and  burned 
Louvain  by  the  way,  bore  down  on  the  left  bank  of 
the  Meuse.  The  French  left  center  rashly  attacked 
168 


A  veteran  from  the  front 


Drawn    bv    Le   Blant 


FRANCE 

at  Charleroi.*  The  British  forces,  just  landed,  were 
attacked  and  almost  surrounded  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Mons.  Charleroi  and  Mons  were  severe  defeats 
for  the  Allies,  and  richly  deserved :  their  tactics  there 
were  madness.  The  best  strength  of  the  German  army 
bore  on  irresistibly,  enveloping  the  French  left,  the 
best  French  troops  were  still  in  the  center  and  on 
the  right,  scarcely  occupied,  the  British  troops  were 
the  flower  of  the  British  army,  but  outnumbered  by 
about  five  to  one.  The  retreat  of  the  Allies  from 
Mons  and  Charleroi  was  a  run.  The  German  right 
bore  on,  marching  thirty  to  thirty-five  miles  a  day. 
The  Allies'  left  retreated,  of  course,  faster  still.  Rear- 
guard fighting  went  on  incessantly,  but  there  was  no 
time  for  pitched  battles,  the  Allies'  retreat  and  the 
German  advance  were  too  rapid.  Imagine  what  it 
was,  this  scamper  of  about  half  a  million  men,  pivot- 
ing on  the  French  center  or  probably  the  right  of  the 
French  center,  down  from  Belgium  to  south  of  the 
Marne,  with  three-quarters  of  a  million  German 
troops,  sturdy,  flushed  with  victory,  full  of  perfect 
confidence,  in  pursuit. 

The  mass  of  the  German  right  wing  was  scarcely 


*  M.  Messimy,  then  Minister  of  War,  insisted  upon  the 
attack,  as  a  "demonstration"  in  support  of  Belgium,  and  a 
"demonstration"  was  all  it  was,  but  a  bloody  one  and  all 
but  fatal.  Lord  Kitchener  then  pressed  upon  the  French 
Government  the  advisability  of  M.  Messimy's  retiring,  which 
he  did  to  join  the  army  as  an  officer  of  modest  rank,  M. 
Millerand  succeeding  him. 

169 


FRANCE 

twenty  miles  from  Paris*  on  September  3.  The  whole 
French  line  from  Verdun  fortress  to  Belgium  had 
been  swept  back,  and  moreover  driven  in  toward  and 
east  of  Paris.  The  line  thus  first  pivoted  like  the 
spoke  of  a  wheel  upon  Verdun  as  the  axle,  then  the 
spoke  itself  gave  way  and  was  bent  in,  crumpled  into 
an  irregular  curve,  the  right  extremity  still  at  Ver- 
dun, the  left  some  twenty  miles  northwest  of  Paris. 
The  line  was  bent  in  southeast  of  Paris  as  far  as 
fifty  miles,  to  where  the  British  forces  had  retired 
from  the  left  of  the  line.  Paris  was  to  be  encom- 
passed from  the  southeast  as  well  as  from  the  north. 
The  German  army  attacking  fitted  the  bent — it  seemed 
a  broken — line  all  along,  from  the  Crown  Prince's 
army  at  the  German  left  to  that  of  General  Von  Kluck 
at  the  extreme  right.  German  command  of  the  field 
seemed  indisputable  and  Paris  a  certain  prey. 

Paris  was  undefended.  Paris  could  not  then  have 
been  defended.  Not  a  fort  round  Paris  could  have 
withstood  heavy  artillery  for  a  day.  Not  a  trench 
had  been  dug,  not  a  gun  placed  in  soft  earthworks, 
which  alone  can  hold  against  modern  heavy  artillery. 
On  September  1  nothing  whatever  had  been  done  to 
prepare  the  defense  of  Paris  on  modern  plans — earth- 
works, trenches,  hidden  batteries,  barbed  wire.  By 
October  Paris,  by  all  the  best  approved  modern  means, 

*The  nearest  point  to  Paris  reached  by  the  German  ad- 
vance guard  was  Gonesse,  about  eight  miles  northeast  of 
the  boundary  of  the  capital,  on  September  3. 

170 


FRANCE 

had  been  made  impregnable,  and  trenches  and  barbed 
wire  and  earthworks  stretched  for  fifty  miles  north- 
ward. But  the  German  army  ought  to  have  seized 
Paris  before  the  middle  of  September  if  the  German 
command  had  been  equal  to  itself,  and  would  have 
seized  Paris  undoubtedly  but  for  the  battle  of  the 
Marne. 

The  German  right  wing,  instead  of  making  on 
straight  from  Senlis  through  Gonesse  to  Paris,  turned 
abruptly  eastward,  still  with  forced  marches  (  Septem- 
ber 4  and  5).  On  September  6  General  Joffre  saw 
General  French  and  ordered  the  attack  all  along  the 
line,  principally  on  the  Allies*  left,  for  the  next  day. 
By  September  11  the  whole  German  line  had  been 
driven  back  fifty  miles.  That  was  the  battle  of  the 
Marne,  called  by  General  Joffre  "indisputably  a  vic- 
tory." What  military  miracle  had  happened? 

The  German  right  wing  within  a  few  miles  of  Paris 
left  Paris  on  its  right  to  rush  east  and  south  in  order 
firstly  to  cut  off  Paris  and  the  railways  on  that  side, 
and  secondly  to  support  the  Crown  Prince,  reported 
to  be  in  some  difficulty  on  the  German  left.  When 
the  German  right  wing  had  turned  at  right  angles, 
a  fresh  French  army  (General  Maunoury)  appeared 
in  its  rear,  i.  e.,  on  what  was  its  right  flank  before 
the  change  of  front  eastward.  The  German  right 
wing  faced  about,  "by  skilful  and  swift  maneuver- 
ing," General  Joffre  himself  recorded,  and  met  the 
171 


FRANCE 

new  French  army.  The  result  was  that  the  German 
line  was  driven  back  only  fifty  miles,  and  had  the 
German  right  wing  parried  less  well,  the  retreat  might 
have  been  then  at  once  to  the  French  frontier. 

When  did  General  Joffre's  definite  purpose  in  re- 
treat shape  itself?  The  retreat  at  first  from  Charleroi 
was  a  forced  retreat,  just  saved  from  a  rout.  Yet 
half-way  in  that  retreat  Joffre  must  have  suddenly 
seen  his  plan.  After  the  first  three  or  four  days  of 
running,  his  generals,  and  General  French,  sent  mes- 
sages, "We  can  hold";  Joffre  said,  "Retire."  To 
one  of  his  general's  urgent  appeals,  "I  am  holding  the 
enemy,  let  me  attack,"  Joffre  said,  "Hold  twenty-four 
hours  if  you  like,  then  retire  again."  On  Saturday, 
September  6,  Joffre  saw  French  and  said,  "Let  us 
attack  to-morrow,  Sunday,  morning." 

Half-way  during  that  almost  despairing  retreat 
from  Charleroi,  Joffre,  who  certainly  never  despaired, 
saw  his  plan,  which  was  this :  "The  pursuing  Germans 
are  confident,  overconfident  perhaps,  bold  and  sure  of 
themselves,  perhaps  overbold  and  cock-sure.  They 
think  they  have  us  on  toast;  have  they?  We  have 
had  rearguard  actions,  they  have  never  seriously  gone 
for  us  since  Charleroi,  they  have  only  pursued  while 
we  fled.  They  think  us  beaten  and  hardly  worth  fight- 
ing any  more ;  they  think  only  of  their  advance,  which 
is  certainly  a  feat,  not  of  us  as  any  more  a  hindrance. 
But  are  we  beaten?  Let  me  try  my  men.  I  will  say, 
172 


FRANCE 

*Stand,  stand  to  the  last  man,'  and  see  what  happens. 
I  hope  and  hope  greatly.  If  my  hope  fails  all  will 
be  over,  and  I  will  tell  them  so.  I  put  my  trust  in 
Providence  and  my  men  who  have  retreated  from 
Charleroi — and  I  will  keep  a  card  up  my  sleeve  if 
I  can.  The  enemy  calls  us  beaten.  I  hope  and  think 
we  are  not.  If  we  are  not  he  will  be  surprised;  I 
will  try  another  surprise.  Our  standing  up  to  him 
at  the  last,  outside  Paris,  will  be  one;  a  fresh  army 
meeting  him  then  will  be  another.  While  we  get  to- 
gether a  new  army  will  he  learn  of  it  by  scouts  and 
aeroplanes  before  we  have  formed  it?  Possibly,  but 
the  ghost  of  a  chance  is  worth  trying." 

Just  that  chance  was  Joffre's.  There  may  be  no 
other  definition  of  a  great  general.  The  triumphant 
German  army  did  despise  its  adversary  and  was 
flushed  with  victory,  and  also  wine,  from  Champagne. 
It  did  rush  on  heedlessly  and  it  did  not  think  of  look- 
ing out  for  anything  new  on  its  right ;  there  it  thought 
all  possible  resistance  crushed.  General  Maunoury's 
new  army  struck  the  blow;  the  German  right  turned 
to  meet  it ;  the  French  armies  that  had  retreated  from 
Charleroi  realized  what  Joffre  hoped,  and  attacked; 
General  Foch,  for  one,  telegraphed  to  Joffre,  "I  am 
driven  in  on  my  right  and  on  my  left,  therefore  I  am 
attacking  in  my  center,"  and  did  so. 

Two  discoveries  were  made  by  the  German  army: 
the  retreating  Allies  not  only  had  fight  enough  left 
173 


FRANCE 

in  them  to  turn  and  attack  suddenly,  but  had  enough 
wit  left  also  to  spring  a  surprise. 


IV 


Several  military  blunders  cost  the  German  army 
the  battle  of  the  Marne.  The  first  (but  the  latest  in 
date)  and  the  most  obvious  was  the  failure  to  detect 
the  formation  of  a  new  French  army  on  the  German 
right.  This  was  an  unpardonable  and  scarcely  com- 
prehensible failure.  General  Maunoury's  army  was 
got  together  in  exactly  forty-eight  hours  just  outside 
Paris.  It  consisted  mainly  of  fresh  troops  from  Co- 
lonial Corps  arrived  from  Africa,  but  also  of  troops 
brought  back  from  the  actual  fighting  line.  The 
army  was  brought  together  by  rail  and  by  five  thou- 
sand taxi-cabs.  General  Gallieni,  formerly  of  Mada- 
gascar, appointed  Military  Governor  of  Paris  in  Sep- 
tember, 1914,  being  its  organizer.  Apparently  the 
German  command  knew  nothing  of  this.  Yet  at  that 
precise  time  German  Tauben  were  flying  over  Paris 
dropping  bombs,  killing  and  maiming  women  and 
children,  and  might  have  found  out  French  military 
preparations.  On  September  3,  a  Taube  day  in  Paris, 
General  Von  Kluck,  commanding  the  German  right, 
knew  nothing  of  General  Maunoury's  army. 

The  second  German  blunder  was  the  psychological 
one  of  not  understanding  the  adversary.  From  Char- 


FRANCE 

leroi  on,  German  officers  and  men  said  to  the  French, 
"Why  fight?  You  are  beaten.  You  are  not  soldiers. 
We  are.  Why  go  on?  Let  us  make  peace."  And 
eighteen  German  army  corps  marched  on  superbly,  in 
admirable  order,  admirably  organized,  a  perfect  fight- 
ing machine. 

They  went  on,  and  committed  the  third  German 
blunder,  much  akin  to  the  second.  This  was  to  ig- 
nore the  adversary's  military  plan.  The  whole  cam- 
paign to  the  battle  of  the  Marne  proved  this  German 
persuasion :  the  foe  does  not  count,  only  our  plan  for 
fighting  the  foe  counts.  It  was  characteristic  of  the 
whole  German  strategy  in  the  campaign  of  1914  in 
France  that  the  German  command  never  assumed  its 
adversary  to  have  a  plan  or  any  ideas  at  all.  Napo- 
leon's battle  genius  lay  in  seizing  instantly  every 
chance  any  blunder  of  the  enemy  gave  him.  The  mod- 
ern German  General  Staff  seemed  to  have  laid  down 
the  axiom  that  as  it  always  intended  to  be  the  attack- 
ing party  its  plan  of  attack  alone  mattered  and  noth- 
ing was  to  be  gained  from  any  watching  of  the  enemy's 
defense.  The  crushing  rush  into  France  through  Bel- 
gium and  down  the  left  bank  of  the  Meuse  was  the 
classic  long-planned  German  attack  and  it  succeeded 
up  to  a  few  miles  of  Paris.  But  the  German  com- 
mand never  seized  the  chances  of  the  moment  as  they 
came ;  the  invasion  marched  imperturbably  and  blindly 
on,  following  the  long  prearranged  plan,  not  follow- 
175 


FRANCE 

ing  up  any  of  the  successes  won.  Many  French  offi- 
cers told  me  that  if  a  Napoleon  had  then  been  the 
German  commander,  the  retreating  Allies  would  have 
been  crushed.  He  would  have  struck  home  repeatedly 
and  the  retreating  armies  could  not  have  held.  As 
it  was,  after  Charleroi,  the  advancing  Germans  merely 
advanced,  almost  ignored  their  adversaries,  never  at- 
tacked them  with  any  persistence.  "Had  they  reso- 
lutely forced  fights  with  us  as  we  retired,"  said  a 
French  general,,  "we  would  have  been  routed." 

They  just  went  marching  on  Paris  ward,  ignoring 
the  adversary,  blind  to  the  supreme  chances  their  own 
successes  gave  them,  and  they  gave  the  adversary  time 
to  organize  a  masterly  retreat,  at  the  end  of  which 
the  armies  beaten  on  the  Belgian  frontier  were  re- 
formed, remade,  and  could  turn  and  face  them,  not 
only  not  demoralized,  but  tempered  and  strengthened 
and  ready,  as  the  French  Commander-in-Chief  told 
them  they  must,  to  stand  to  the  death.  The  Germans 
still  came  gaily  on,  looting  and  drinking  and  murder- 
ing non-combatants  by  the  way,  and  apparently  per- 
suaded that  the  adversary  they  had  driven  before  them 
had  melted  into  nothing.  That  the  pursued  armies 
turned  round  and  stood  and  fought  ten  times  better 
than  at  Charleroi,  that  a  new  French  army  came  out 
on  the  German  right  flank,  that  there  was  any  fight 
left  or  that  there  were  any  fresh  troops  left  in  the 
Allied  armies,  was,  I  imagine,  the  greatest  surprise 
176 


FRANCE 

the  German  General  Staff  ever  had.  Unsurpassed 
preparation  for  conquest  by  force  of  arms  achieved 
by  the  German  people  was  stultified  by  the  German 
people's  utter  inability  to  know  the  mind  of  other 
peoples.  German  military  strength  was  a  formidable 
monster  wrapped  in  self-contemplation. 


The  stupendous  German  battle  for  Calais,  lasting 
over  two  months,  a  bloodier  fight  even  than  Charleroi 
or  the  Marne,  was  another  proof  of  German  strength 
and  German  stupidity.  Think  what  General  French's 
and  General  Joffre's  position  was:  armies  exhausted 
by  defeat  first  and  terribly  won  victory  afterward, 
just  enough  in  numbers  to  keep  the  lines,  no  reserves 
to  be  had.  The  enemy  had  at  least  eight  army  corps 
massed  in  Belgium  perfectly  fresh  that  had  never 
seen  fighting  and  were  spoiling  for  it.  The  road  to 
Calais  was  open,  Lille  and  Maubeuge  were  German, 
nothing  could  have  stopped  a  good  German  general. 
The  Germans  sat  down  and  slowly  concentrated  their 
best  new  troops.  Joffre  and  French  knew  naturally 
what  was  coming  and  raced  to  the  sea.  What  a  race 
it  was!  Here,  a  worn-out  French  regiment  kept  the 
line  for  twenty-four  hours,  till  a  little  less  fagged 
regiment  could  be  brought  up.  There,  old  territorials 
showed  a  bold  front  while  other  troops  were  rushed 
177 


FRANCE 

up  behind  them  northward.  Step  by  step,  by  smart 
use  of  rail  and  motor,  troops  were  taken  up,  one  move- 
ment masking  another,  and  it  was  the  Allies  who  got 
to  the  sea  first.  The  Germans,  as  usual,  had  affected 
to  ignore  the  adversary.  They  had  solemnly  massed 
their  completely  fresh  army  corps,  some  of  their  best 
troops  composed  of  university  young  men,  and  when 
the  troops  were  concentrated,  but  only  then,  they  at- 
tacked the  Yser  for  Calais.  Unfortunately  for  them 
the  Allies  had  by  then  got  there  first.  The  slaughter 
of  the  flower  of  German  youth  on  that  Yser  Canal 
is  already  history,  presumably  even  in  Germany.  It 
is  a  mistake  to  think  German  military  leadership  mas- 
terly; it  is  astute,  it  is  not  intelligent.  With  half 
a  Napoleon  to  lead  them  the  Germans  could  have  taken 
Calais  in  September,  1914. 

In  1916,  with  the  most  furious,  desperate  and 
mighty  blows  ever  known  in  military  history,  they 
could  not  take  Verdun.  There  was  no  maneuvering 
there.  It  was  just  a  battering-ram  that  found  a  wall 
against  which  it  battered  in  vain.  It  was  the  Ger- 
mans' old  denseness  that  never  understands  their 
neighbor.  The  French  soldiers  they  attacked  were 
wolves  at  bay.  Every  Frenchman  fighting  for  Verdun 
had  given  up  his  life  already  and  then  thought  no 
more  about  it.  This  really  was  France  fighting  for 
her  life  and  simply  preferring  to  die  than  to  yield. 
It  was  no  use  trying  to  frighten  her  or  work  upon 
178 


tf:- 


«      CS 

^      ^ 


< 


FRANCE 

her  nerves  then.  Every  officer  and  man  I  saw  round 
Verdun  was  ready  to  die  the  next  moment.  One  could 
not  have  spoken  the  word  heroism  to  them,  they  would 
have  shuddered  at  the  tactlessness  of  it.  They  were 
just  doing  their  soldier's  job.  "We  won't  let  the 
Bodies  through,"  was  all  they  said — and  they  didn't. 
The  Germans  never  could  have  taken  Verdun,  least  of 
all  when  they  tried. 

The  army  of  the  Third  French  Republic  proved 
that  the  Frenchman  has  all  the  old  fight  in  him.  The 
French  soldier  of  to-day  is  as  brave  as  his  forebear 
of  the  First  Empire  or  the  First  Revolution.  The 
Third  French  Republic  proved  that  a  democracy,  op- 
posed to  militarism,  bent  on  social  ideals  and  often 
distraught  among  a  dozen  different  ones,  absorbed  in 
a  surface  whirl  of  politics  and  usually  divided  against 
herself,  could  nevertheless,  while  pursuing  at  the  same 
time  a  hundred  other  heterogeneous  objects,  build  up 
a  military  strength  that  could  at  all  events  stand  up 
to  that  of  an  autocratic  Empire  which  had  centered 
all  its  energies  upon  acquiring  military  strength. 

The  Republic  did  not  provide  enough  heavy  ar- 
tillery, did  not  fortify  adequately  northern  towns  like 
Maubeuge,  did  not  manufacture  ammunition  enough, 
did  not  thoroughly  prepare  for  war.  She  paid  the  pen- 
alty :  devastation  of  northeastern  France  and  unspeak- 
able outrages  by  a  methodically  savage  enemy.  But 
the  Republic  saved  France  all  the  same.  In  the  midst 
170 


FRANCE 

of  unpreparedness,  she  was  the  French  debrouillard 
wit  that,  like  the  English,  "muddles  through."  The 
Republic  was  the  real  France,  plucky,  resourceful, 
quick.  No  other  Government,  Empire  or  Monarchy, 
was  in  history  more  the  real  France.  The  Repub- 
lic's armies  fought  for  the  French  Republic  and  did 
not  think  of  the  Republic  and  of  France  apart.  Gen- 
eral Joffre  was  an  Atheist  Radical  Republican  and 
General  Marquis  de  Curieres  de  Castelnau  a  Royalist 
Roman  Catholic — nothing  of  that  mattered.  Only 
France  mattered.  There  were  no  French  home  in- 
trigues about  the  war  of  1914.  The  French  nation 
in  arms  fought,  every  man,  for  France,  not  for  a 
party.  What  defeat  might  have  brought  I  do  not 
know,  but  no  change  could  arise  out  of  victory.  The 
French  army,  which  was  the  French  nation,  remained 
absolutely  loyal  to  the  Republic,  French  democracy 
came  out  of  the  struggle  not  weakened  but  strength- 
ened. 


CHAPTER  XII 

CHURCHES 
I 

THE  Churches  and  the  French  spirit,  the  Churches 
and  the  French  State,  the  Churches  and  the  French 
people — religious  questions  in  the  France  of  to-day 
may  thus  be  roughly  summed  up.  The  hold  of  the 
Churches  upon  the  French  spirit  has  seldom  been 
mystical.  Religion  outside  the  Churches  has  seldom 
had  much  hold  upon  the  French  spirit.  The  great 
religious  movements  of  modern  Europe  have  not 
sprung  from  France.  The  Huguenots  were  and  re- 
main a  small  minority  in  the  nation.  The  Jansen- 
ists,  almost  the  only  French  religious  mystics  for 
centuries,  hovered  perilously  near  heresy  and  were 
stamped  out.  They  were  Roman  Catholic  Puritans, 
and  the  French  spirit  asks  for  a  human  religion. 

The  French  spirit,  being  above  all  human,  wants 
a  human  religion,  not  a  transcendental,  superhuman 
or  inhuman  religion,  but  a  religion  that  makes  allow- 
ances and  allows  compromises,  an  accommodating  re- 
ligion ;  a  perhaps  not  deeply  religious  religion.  The 
want  comes  not  from  hypocrisy,  but  from  sincerity. 
It  is  the  Anglo-Saxon  religious  spirit  that  is  trying 
181 


FRANCE 

to  fly  anywhere  out  of  the  world  and  trying  to  believe 
that  it  can  and  does.  The  French  spirit  can  not  for- 
get that  it  inhabits  a  frame  with  feet  of  clay.  It 
calls  a  religion  sincere  that  says  the  flesh  is  weak; 
the  other  religious  spirit  calls  condoning  hypocritical. 
Which  is  the  more  sincere?  The  French  spirit  is 
certainly  sincere.  It  posits  humanity  first  of  all 
and  assumes  that  religion  shall  not  be  a  way  out 
of  humanity  but  shall  make  the  best  of  human- 
ity. It  wants  a  workable  religion;  hence  no  re- 
ligion has  had  or  has  as  much  hold  over  the  French 
nation  as  the  Roman  Catholic.  Carrying  on  the 
same  reasons,  the  French  spirit  prefers  an  organ- 
ized, politic  and  tried  religion.  If  you  need  a  re- 
ligion, there  is  no  point  in  rebellion ;  if  you  are  a  rebel, 
leave  all  religions.  It  is  a  fact  of  great  importance 
for  the  knowledge  of  the  French  nation  that  religious 
sects  have  never  flourished  within  it,  and  scarcely  ever 
even  existed.  Thousands  thrive  in  Anglo-Saxondom. 
The  Salvation  Army  since  its  beginning  has  doggedly 
and  fruitlessly  tried  to  implant  itself  in  French  life. 
Rome  satisfies  French  seekers  after  religion,  who  seek 
a  human  religion,  who  do  not  break  away  because 
they  seek,  but  on  the  contrary  look  for  a  rule. 

French  thought  has  sapped  the  Churches  perhaps 
more  than  any  other,  but  almost  always  from  purely 
human  reasons.     Voltaire  is  the  type  of  purely  hu- 
man foes  of  all  churches.     French  thought  has  not 
182 


FRANCE 

attacked  established  revealed  religions  on  their  own 
ground,  has  not  set  up  other  religions  against  them. 
French  metaphysics  from  Descartes  to  Professor  Bou- 
troux  have  been  compatible  with  Christian  dogma: 
no  mysticism  clashing  with  the  mysteries  of  the 
Church  of  Rome.  Comte  alone  of  French  philosophers 
set  up  a  new  religion,  and  that  was  the  religion  of 
humanity,  and  he  was  by  his  own  definition  no  meta- 
physician ;  anyhow,  his  Positivism  is  dead.  Modern 
French  philosophy  for  half  a  century  or  more  was 
a  milk  and  water  idealism,  with  Victor  Cousin,  Paul 
Janet,  severely  eschewing  mysticism.  After  Lachelicr 
and  Ravaisson,  Professor  Boutroux  (to  recall  the  one 
shrewd  remark  of  the  novelist,  M.  Paul  Bourget,  on 
receiving  him  into  the  French  Academy  )  in  his  treatise 
of  the  Contingency  of  Natural  Law,  supplied  the  one 
argument  for  idealism  which  for  fifty  years  in  French 
philosophy  a  weak  idealism  had  in  vain  been  look- 
ing for.  Still  not  a  tinge  of  mysticism  in  this  ideal- 
ism. Professor  Bergson,  undermining  the  intellectual 
conception  of  the  universe,  might  have  set  rolling  a 
wave  of  mysticism  and  did  not.  The  French  spirit 
is  human  and  skeptical  or  human  and  religious,  un- 
less it  be  all  three,  human,  skeptical  and  religious, 
as  in  Renan.  If  religious,  Rome  satisfies  it,  not  with 
the  cheap  sensuousness  of  incense,  still  less  with  the 
tawdry  trappings  of  the  worst  modern  ecclesiastical 
art,  as  seen  at  Lourdes,  but  with  wise  humanity  and 

183 


FRANCE 

politic  knowledge  of  the  world.  To  find  sweeping 
waves  of  inhuman  religiousness  one  must  go  to  Anglo- 
Saxondom  or  to  Slavism,  to  the  Puritans  and  to  the 
Doukhobors. 

The  problem  of  the  relations  of  Church  and  State 
has,  especially  in  modern  times,  been  the  most  acute 
religious  question  before  the  French  nation  precisely 
because  the  French  spirit  preferred  to  consider  a  hu- 
man, politic,  social  and  organized  faith.  Had  the 
French  spirit  looked  upon  religion  from  a  standpoint 
more  detached  from  human  affairs,  political  contacts, 
clashings  and  connections  between  Church  and  State 
would  have  been  less  prominent  in  French  history. 
The  English  people,  for  example,  after  many  religious 
quarrels,  faces  no  great  Church  and  State  conflict 
to-day,  not  merely  because  the  very  well  established 
Anglican  Church  is  still  inexpugnable,  but  also,  and 
principally,  because  the  English  religious  spirit  has 
found  outlets  in  many  streams  of  belief  that  led 
freely  and  undiverted  not  to  humanly  constructive 
systems  of  faith,  but  often  indeed  away  from  human 
affairs.  The  American  people  knows  no  Church  and 
State  antagonism  because  its  Churches  are  free,  but 
these  are  free  precisely  because  they  are  not  great 
politic  human  systems,  because  they  are  many,  and 
because  each  leads  away  from,  rather  than  to,  prob- 
lems of  social  construction.  In  both  peoples  a  tend- 
ency to  combine  religious  and  human  affairs  would 
184 


Reims  Cathedral,  not  bombarded 


FRANCE 

have  produced  Church  and  State  conflicts.  The  An- 
glo-Saxon spirit  lets  itself  loose  on  religion,  and  keeps 
the  practical  business  of  society  and  Government  sep- 
arate. The  French  spirit  makes  a  human,  social  and 
political  business  of  religion. 

The  modern  history  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
in  France  has  always  been  political,  or  at  least  has 
never  been  divorced  from  political  action:  the  mod- 
ern history  of  the  Church  has  always  been  more  or 
less  the  history  of  Church  and  State.  The  relations 
between  the  two  have  been  various  and  complex,  they 
have  always  been  close.  It  suited  the  French  spirit 
to  hold  the  Church  to  be  as  much  a  body  politic  as 
a  spiritual  force,  the  French  State  never  had  a  differ- 
ent conception  of  the  function  of  the  Church  and  the 
Church  herself  did  not  conceive  her  function  other- 
wise. In  the  relations  between  Church  and  State  there 
have  been  alliance  and  antagonism  and  various  forms 
of  both.  Church  and  State  have  fought  each  other 
and  used  each  other,  and  conflicts  and  maneuvering 
have  been  diverse  and  complicated.  The  old  monarchy 
was  often  in  conflict  with  Rome ;  the  Church  sometimes 
stood  for  Rome  against  the  State,  sometimes  used  the. 
State  against  Rome. 

The  "Gallican"  movement  in  the  French  Church 

at  times  was  strong,  and  it  might  have  happened  that 

a  Gallican  Catholic  Church  had  been  founded,  owing 

no  doubt  allegiance  to  Rome,  yet  not  directly  depend- 

185 


FRANCE 

ing  upon  Rome.  "Ultramontanes"  fought  "Galli- 
cans"  and  were  alternately  allied  with  and  arrayed 
against  the  French  State,  as  the  latter  was  for  or 
against  Rome  and  threw  over  or  used  the  Gallicans. 
The  Archbishop  of  Paris  might  have  become  the  head 
of  a  Gallican  Church ;  in  the  same  but  contrary  way, 
it  is  a  mere  accident  of  history  that  the  Anglican 
Church  is  not  to-day  the  English  branch  of  the  Church 
of  Rome,  with  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  as  its 
Primate  and  the  Vicar  in  England  as  the  Vicar  of 
St.  Peter  at  Rome.  The  French  State,  from  the  Old 
Monarchy  to  almost  to-day,  alternately  used  and 
dropped  the  nascent  Gallican  Church.  The  latter, 
now  completely  dead,  might  be  powerful  to-day  had 
the  State  pursued  a  constant  policy  toward  it.  Na- 
poleon I,  whose  policy  was  the  most  drastic  of  all 
State  policies  toward  the  Church  and  who  captured 
the  Pope,  drew  up  the  Concordat  with  Rome  which 
established  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  France  and 
which  lasted  a  century.  He  might  have  established 
a  Gallican  Church,  and  the  consequences  might  have 
been  very  different  for  Church  and  for  State. 


n 


The  Concordat  was  revoked  by  the  Third  Republic 
in  1905—1907.     An  intricate  story  of  political  con- 
nections and  interactions  between  Church  and  State 
186 


FRANCE 

which  I  must  try  to  sum  up  in  a  few  pages  led  to  that 
denunciation  of  contract  which  was  the  most  thorough, 
swift,  quiet  and  successful  revolution  accomplished  by 
any  nation  in  modern  times.  That  the  Church  in 
France  is  a  body  politic  must  always  be  remembered. 
Its  relations  with  the  Third  Republic  varied.  Under 
the  Third  Republic  the  State  has  been  usually  but 
not  constantly  hostile  to  the  Church,  the  Church  has 
not  been  constantly  hostile  to  the  State,  but  when 
friendly  has  tried  to  use  the  State;  the  State  never 
tried  to  use  the  Church,  which  was  its  mistake.  Anti- 
Clericalism  in  the  State,  Anti-Republicanism  in  the 
Church,  is  a  rough  serviceable  generalization.  With 
Gambetta's  "Clericalism,  there  is  the  enemy"  the  Third 
Republic  certainly  started  hostile  to  the  Church,  but 
it  did  not  constantly  remain  so.  When  the  Third  Re- 
public was  founded  the  Church  undoubtedly  and 
avowedly  stood  against  the  Republic ;  for  a  restoration 
of  the  Monarchy,  or  for  a  continuation  of  the  Empire 
if  that  had  been  thinkable.  This  may  not  have  been 
the  Church  of  the  country,  the  church  of  village  priest 
and  peasant  parishioner,  probably  was  not ;  but  it  was 
the  political  church,  the  church  with  all  the  wirepull- 
ing in  her  hand. 

The  Anti-Clericalism  of  the  Third  Republic  has 
seemed  to  outsiders  unfair  and  harsh — the  shutting  up 
Church   schools,   disbanding  of  religious   orders,   re- 
moval of  nuns  from  the  hospitals.     Countries  where 
187 


FRANCE 

all  religious  schools  and  religious  orders  live  freely 
called  such  measures  bigotry.  They  were  countries 
in  which  there  may  or  may  not  be  Church  and  State 
conflicts,  but  in  which,  if  there  be,  the  Church  is  not 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  England,  for  instance, 
with  her  firmly  established  Church,  has  her  own  prob- 
lems of  Churches  and  State,  but  none  like  that  of 
France,  whose  contemporary  problem  has  been  that 
of  conflict  between  the  Government  the  new  France 
has  chosen  and  the  century-old  Church.  The  Third 
Republic  did  not  always  fight  the  Church,  but  some- 
times showed  the  olive  branch,  if  not  very  intelligently. 
Three  periods  can  be  marked  out  in  the  relations 
of  Church  and  State  under  the  Third  Republic  up 
to  disestablishment.  The  first  was  frankly  Anti-Cler- 
icalism on  one  side  and  the  Church  versus  the  Repub- 
lic on  the  other ;  the  Church  openly  prayed  and  worked 
for  the  restoration  of  any  form  of  Government  that 
would  do  away  with  the  Republic.  The  second  began 
in  1894  with  a  phrase  of  a  Republican  minister,  Spul- 
ler,  "V esprit  nouveau":  the  phrase  is  remembered 
nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  afterward,  and  phrases 
that  have  stuck  have  often  made  revolutions,  especially 
in  France.  This  one  did  not  make  a  revolution,  but 
nearly  did.  It  meant  reconciliation  between  the  Re- 
public and  the  Church  of  Rome.  Almost  simultane- 
ously (1890)  Pope  Leo  XIII  had  taken  the  corre- 
sponding step  and  advised  (it  was  a  command,  but 
188 


FRANCE 

not  a  formal  one)  French  Roman  Catholics  to  give  up 
what  Anti-Republican,  Royalist  or  Imperialist  action 
they  had  pursued  for  the  sake  of  the  Church,  and 
precisely  for  the  sake  of  the  Church  to  "rally  round 
the  Republic." 

It  was  the  most  interesting  political  and  religious 
situation  thinkable  in  France  at  the  time.  The  Anti- 
Republican  political  parties  were  suddenly  arrested 
by  the  papal  command;  half  the  Royalists  and  Im- 
perialists suddenly  became  "Rallies,"  as  they  were 
called.  The  Republic  was  suddenly  offered  the  im- 
mense power  of  the  Church  as  its  support.  The 
French  Roman  Catholic  Church  was  suddenly  given 
perhaps  the  greatest  chance  it  has  ever  had;  under 
the  old  Monarchy  the  attempts  at  an  independent  Gal- 
lican  Church  were  made  only  under  the  King's  wing 
and  a  Gallican  Church  could  have  established  itself 
in  power  only  with  the  Throne  backing  it  against 
Rome.  When  Leo  XIII  told  French  Catholics,  "Rally 
to  the  Republic,"  he  gave  an  extraordinary  chance 
both  to  French  Catholics  and  to  the  Republic.  A 
very  few  French  Churchmen  saw  it;  the  Gallican 
Church,  accepting  and  supporting  the  Republic, 
might  have  been  established. 

The  Republic  of  the  "esprit  nouveau"  then  seemed 

ready.     The  Church  might  have  built  up  with  the 

Republic  a  lasting  political  and  religious  organism, 

whereas  to-day  Church  and  State  are  divorced  politi- 

189 


FRANCE 

cal  bodies.  The  Republic  also  threw  away  or  more 
probably  ignored  its  chance.  If  few  French  Church- 
men saw  that  then  was  the  time  for  a  Gallican  Church 
to  be  at  last  founded  with  the  Republic,  as  few  French 
statesmen  saw  that  then,  or  never  perhaps,  the  Re- 
public could  strengthen  herself  by  the  Church.  Anti- 
Clericalism  suddenly  ceased  to  be  even  "an  article  for 
home  consumption  only,"  as  Gambetta  had  called  it. 
Voltaireanism  remained  a  venerable  and  acceptable 
•mental  attitude,  but  no  longer  seemed  to  be  practical 
politics.  The  great  political  and  practical  possibility 
caught  sight  of  and  for  a  little  while  contemplated 
was  that  of  a  combination  of  the  Republican  political 
system  and  the  Church  political  system. 

It  would  have  been  a  fine  piece  of  political  joinery 
and  might  have  turned  out  a  masterpiece.  The 
Church  of  Rome  in  France  and  the  Republic  in  France 
united  would  have  won  for  each  other  and  together 
an  impregnable  position.  The  Church  would  have 
been  established  in  the  State  more  strongly  than  ever 
before  in  history;  the  Gallican  Church  would  have 
had  such  authority  and  power  for  answering  Rome 
in  those  thousand  small  arguments  and  differences 
that  arise  yearly  between  Rome  and  her  churches  in 
all  countries  as  no  Roman  Catholic  Church  of  any 
country  has  ever  had  before.  The  Republic  for  its 
own  part,  allied  with  the  Church,  would  have  brought 
all  Anti-Republicans — Royalists,  Bonapartists,  any 
190 


FRANCE 

kind  of  Imperialists — at  once  to  their  knees.  Many 
intelligent  French  observers,  with  whom  I  agree  to 
a  great  extent,  think  that  such  an  alliance,  which 
would  have  been  a  big  bold  move  for  a  big  states- 
man to  play  and  which  might  have  altered  modern  his- 
tory, was  feasible.  Anti-Clericalism  in  the  country 
had  been  almost  solely  political.  The  parish  priest 
left  to  himself  would  have  been  quite  content  with  the 
Republic;  his  parishioners  were  no  enemies  of  his, 
when  he  did  not  canvass  for  Anti-Republican  candi- 
dates. Some  prelates  of  the  Church  of  Rome  in 
France,  the  great  African  missionary  prelate,  Cardi- 
nal Lavigerie,  for  one,  saw  no  antagonism  at  all  be- 
tween the  Republic  and  the  Church;  a  few  French 
statesmen  saw  no  reverse  contradiction  between  the 
Church  and  the  Republic.  Some  prelates,  of  whom 
Cardinal  Lavigerie  was  no  doubt  one,  saw  the  chance 
for  the  Gallican  Church  in  an  alliance  with  the  Re- 
public ;  no  great  Republican  statesman  saw  the  equiv- 
alent opportunity  for  the  Republic.  The  opportunity 
for  both  passed  quickly.  If  fault  there  were,  it  was 
a  fault  on  both  sides.  The  Republic  did  not  under- 
stand, the  Church  wouldn't  understand. 

The  Dreyfus  Case  came,  and  after  it  the  disestab- 
lishment of  the  Churches  in  France.  The  Roman 
Catholic  Church  in  France  and  the  Republic  in  France 
had  not  understood  how  to  help  each  other.  The  op- 
portunity gone,  the  Republic  made,  as  to-day,  less 
191 


FRANCE 

use  than  ever  of  the  Church.  But  the  Church  in  the 
interval  had  used  the  brief  opportunity  wrongly  and 
distorted  the  chance  offered  of  cooperation  between 
Church  and  State. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  in  the  main  the  Church  of 
Rome  in  France  used  its  influence  against  the  Repub- 
lic and  used  precisely  against  the  Republic  the  oppor- 
tunity offered  of  cooperation  with  the  Republic.  In 
the  few  years  preceding  the  Dreyfus  Case  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Church,  Anti-Clericalism  waning,  waxed 
enormously;  it  was  not  an  influence  loyally  serving 
the  Republic.  Thus,  when  the  Dreyfus  Case  broke 
out,  the  War  Office  was  mostly  peopled  with  servants 
of  the  Church;  otherwise  there  probably  would  have 
been  no  Dreyfus  Case.  The  Dreyfus  War  raged,  and 
the  Church  plunged  furiously  into  the  fight.  One 
Churchman  here  and  there  kept  his  head,  but  the  mil- 
lions swamped  him.  The  case  for  or  against  the  Jew 
Captain  disappeared  in  the  Dreyfusard  and  Anti- 
Dreyfusard  war.  If  the  Anti-Dreyfusards  had  won, 
the  Republic  would  have  been  overthrown.  That 
shows  what  the  policy  of  the  Church  of  Rome  in 
France  became.  Rare  churchmen  here  and  there 
doubted  the  wisdom  of  that  policy. 

Divorce  became  unavoidable  between  the  State  and 
the  Church  of  Rome,  and  between  the  State  and  the 
Churches,  the  two  others,  the  Jewish  and  the  Re- 
formed, established  on  exactly  the  same  footing  by 
192 


FRANCE 

Napoleon  I  as  the  Church  of  Rome,  sharing  helplessly 
the  latter's  fate.  Church  and  State  being  regarded  in 
their  relations  to  each  other,  there  was,  both  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  Church  and  from  that  of  the 
State,  as  much  to  be  said  for  as  against  disestablish- 
ment. For  the  Church  the  gain  was  independence  in  the 
State :  no  priest  was  a  Government  official  any  longer ; 
no  bishop  could  be  censored  for  "abuse"  of  his  mission, 
as  under  the  statutes  of  the  Concordat,  with  docking 
of  his  salary,  on  the  ground  of  political  action  taken 
by  him ;  the  Church  was  free  to  take  any  political  ac- 
tion and  to  side  with  any  political  party  for,  or  more 
plausibly,  against  the  Republic.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  price  to  pay  for  independence  in  the  State  was  for 
the  Church  in  France  eventually  and  inevitably 
greater  dependence  upon  Rome.  The  dream  of  a 
Gallican  Church  was  forever  shattered  by  disestab- 
lishment; the  Church  of  Rome  in  France  divorced 
from  the  State  not  only  could  not  hope  to  stand  by 
herself  but  could  stand  only  with  ever  stronger  Roman 
support,  and  must  by  the  force  of  circumstances  be 
less  and  less  a  Gallican  Church  and  more  and  more  an 
alien  church  in  the  country;  severed  from  the  State 
she  was  free  of  the  State,  but  it  might  be  dangerously 
free,  for,  if  led  to  political  action,  perhaps  driven  by 
Rome  thither,  she  was  no  longer  under  State  control, 
but  the  State  also  was  bound  no  longer  and  would  hit 
back  without  mercy.  The  State,  for  its  own  part, 
193 


FRANCE 

was  delivered  by  disestablishment  of  the  incubus  of 
an  acknowledged  State  within  the  State,  and  a  State 
mainly  hostile  to  the  including  State :  no  more  State- 
supported  priests  and  prelates,  constantly  to  be 
watched  and  constantly  working  against  the  State ; 
no  more  vesting  of  authority  by  the  Republic  in 
priests  who  served  secretly  a  restoration  of  the  Mon- 
archy or  the  Empire ;  a  complex  and  ambiguous  prob- 
lem of  French  politics  was  at  once  made  clear  and 
simple.  But  it  was  not  solved  because  it  was  simpli- 
fied. By  disestablishing  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
the  French  State  threw  away  a  weapon  as  well  as  a 
burden ;  it  freed  itself  from,  but  also  set  free  a  for- 
midable power ;  all  hopes  of  working  with  or  making 
use  of  the  Church  went ;  the  destruction  of  the  dream 
of  a  Gallican  Church  was  as  serious  a  thing  for  the 
State  as  for  the  Church. 

While  thinking  men  on  both  sides  weighed  these 
arguments,  action  on  both  sides  made  divorce  inevita- 
ble. But  in  the  long  negotiations  over  the  divorce  the 
misgivings  and  hesitations  of  far-sighted  politicians 
on  both  sides  were  reflected.  The  history  of  these  ne- 
gotiations was  a  remarkable  example  of  the  Vatican's 
good  political  judgment  and  of  the  political  realism 
of  the  French  Republic.  The  Republic's  measure  was 
twice  rejected  imperturbably  by  the  Vatican,  though 
the  French  Church  accepted  it.  Associations  cul- 
tueUes  were  to  be  formed,  to  which  each  parish 
194 


FRANCE 

church  was  to  be  handed  over;  French  bishops  ac- 
cepted the  associations ;  the  Vatican  vetoed  them  ab- 
solutely. The  Republic  tried  again  and  the  second 
measure  was  framed,  by  which  each  parish  priest  ob- 
tained possession  of  his  church  from  the  State  on 
making  a  legal  declaration  ad  hoc.  The  French 
Church  would  have  accepted  that  measure;  it  also 
was  absolutely  vetoed  by  the  Vatican.  The  Republic 
made  a  third  attempt  and  churches  were  simply  left 
open  by  the  State  "for  the  practise  of  religion 
therein,"  and  by  that  law  Roman  Catholic  Churches 
in  France  to-day  are  worshiped  in  exactly  as  before 
disestablishment.*  Rome  won,  because  Rome  saw 
that  the  Republic  in  this  must  and  would  drop  the 
old  revolutionary  formal  logic  and  arrange  a  com- 
promise. The  shaping  of  the  once  Anti-Clerical  and 
theoretical  measure  of  disestablishment  by  M.  Briand 
to  fit  the  facts  of  the  day  was  the  greatest  sign  of  a 
new  tendency  in  modern  France  to  suit  the  old  ideal- 
ism of  French  politics  to  the  old  realism  of  French  life. 
The  Roman  Catholic  Church,  the  Reformed  Church 
and  the  Jewish  Church,  established  in  exactly  the 
same  legal  status  in  France  for  a  century,  were,  in  the 
course  of  the  political  struggle  between  the  first  and 
the  Republic,  all  three  disestablished  by  the  law  of 


*  The  up-keep  and  artistic  repair  of  great  churches  of 
France,  classified  as  "historical  monuments,"  had  long  been 
undertaken  solely  by  the  State. 

195 


FRANCE 

1905,  amended  in  1907  to  suit  the  Church  of  Rome. 
How  do  and  will  Church  and  State  questions  affect  the 
relations  of  Churches  and  people?  There  were  no 
Church  and  State  questions  between  the  French  State 
and  the  Reformed  and  Jewish  Churches.  The  two 
latter  did  and  do  exercise  definite  political  influence, 
but  it  was  and  is  definite  and  circumscribed.  It  can 
not  spread,  for  the  Reformed  Church  in  France  makes 
no  converts  from  Roman  Catholicism.  It  could  not 
come  into  conflict  with  the  State,  for  Jew  and  Protes- 
tant politicians  and  statesmen  enjoyed  their  full  share 
of  power  and  generally  employed  it  against  the  Ro- 
man Catholic  Church,  but  they  formed  two  definite 
and  homogeneous  circles  of  political  influence,  which 
could  not  widen,  just  as  in  religion  Jews  and  French 
Protestants  make  no  proselytes.  The  Roman  Catholic 
Church  charged  the  Synagogue  and  the  French  Re- 
formed Church  with  abetting  the  State  against  her ; 
to  some  extent  they  did,  but  it  was  scarcely  surprising 
that  they  should,  for  they  were  the  pygmies  and  Rome 
the  giant. 

Yet  Rome  could  not  prevent  disestablishment  in 
France.  But  did  Rome  honestly  want  to  prevent  dis- 
establishment? As  a  matter  of  principle,  yes;  it  is 
part  of  the  admirably  coherent  and  continuous  policy 
of  Rome  to  hold  that  the  Church  of  Rome  should  by 
right  be  the  State  Church  in  every  nation  of  the 

196 


FRANCE 

world.  As  for  expediency,  Rome  did  nothing  to  pre- 
vent disestablishment  in  France;  it  might  not  have 
been  avoidable,  but  the  political  action  of  the  Church 
seemed  almost  to  be  asking  for  it.  When  it  came, 
Rome  deliberately  forced  the  State,  by  rejecting  all 
compromises  successively,  to  separate  the  Church  from 
itself  more  completely  than  it  had  ever  intended.  A 
principle,  of  course,  was  at  stake,  that  of  the  su- 
premacy of  spiritual  authority,  which  might  have 
been  threatened  by  the  forming  of  partly  lay  "asso- 
ciations" for  receiving  from  the  State  the  charge  of 
the  State-owned  churches,  but  principles  can  be  ac- 
commodated when  necessary  to  further  reaching  poli- 
cies. Rome  would  have  preserved  connections  with 
the  French  State  in  spite  of  principles,  as  churchmen 
and  religious  laymen — like  the  "green  Cardinals,"  so 
called  because  they  were  religious  laymen,  most  of 
whom  could  don  the  Academician's  uniform  with  green 
palm  leaves — advised,  if  that  had  been  her  policy. 
She  made  the  bolder  move  and  chose  to  have  for  the 
first  time  in  French  Christian  history  her  church  in 
France  bound  by  not  one  single  tie  to  the  State  of  the 
ancient  Catholic  country,  not  even  by  a  priest's  mere 
declaration  of  occupation  of  a  place  of  worship.  Was 
Rome  right  or  wrong?  Rome  is  generally  right.  The 
State  was  hostile,  the  Church  could  not  capture  the 
State ;  better  then  to  cut  all  connection  with  the  State. 
197 


FRANCE 
III 

The  future  will  show  whether  the  Church  has  lost 
in  France  by  disestablishment,  promoted  by  the  State 
and  pursued  by  the  Church  herself,  or  has  gained  by 
it.  Among  the  losses  is  that  of  the  priest's  position 
and  prestige  as  one  holding  authority  from  the  State, 
a  serious  loss  in  France.  M.  le  Cure  is  but  one  of 
ourselves  now,  the  garde-champetre  is  better  than  he, 
holding  authority  from  the  powers  that  be.  Among 
the  gains  is  that  of  the  independence  of  the  higher 
clergy.  Monseigneur  snaps  his  fingers  now  at  the 
Prefect,  becomes,  where  he  sees  his  chance,  a  great 
political  personage,  a  fount  of  political  influence,  a 
head  of  political  power,  and  neither  Prefect,  nor  Min- 
ister, nor  Parliament  can  even  say  a  word ;  in  the  old 
days  of  Napoleon's  Concordat  any  one  of  these  could 
silence  him,  suspend  and  dismiss  him.  The  Church 
party  since  the  Republic  has  never  commanded  at 
Parliamentary  elections  more  than  an  inadequate  rep- 
resentative minority;  if  it  should  ever  command,  not 
a  majority,  but  even  a  bare  half  of  the  constituencies, 
the  political  freedom  due  to  disestablishment  will  give 
it  remarkable  power,  perhaps  with  startling  results. 
The  French  State  does  not  seem  to  have  thought  of 
that  not  probable  but  possible  chance.  So  far  Rome 
to  have  been  justified  in  enforcing,  after  pro- 
198 


FRANCE 

tests,  disestablishment.  The  Church  among  the  peo- 
ple has  hitherto  not  lost  and  perhaps  gained. 

In  society,  in  the  fashionable  world,  in  the  solid 
bourgeoisie,  the  influence  of  the  Church  increased  im- 
mediately after  disestablishment.  Anti-Clericalism  was 
more  hopelessly  "bad  form"  than  ever.  The  minis- 
trations of  the  Church  at  marriage,  birth  and  death 
were  more  than  ever  required.  Only  the  religious 
wedding  was  of  any  account,  the  civil  ceremony  was 
held  ridiculous  and  vulgar  and  treated  as  uncere- 
moniously as  possible ;  the  woman  married  only  by  the 
mayor  and  not  by  the  Church  was  considered  to  be  a 
concubine;  the  divorced  woman  married  again,  natu- 
rally not  by  the  Church,  was  living  in  adultery ;  not 
to  christen  children  and  to  bury  the  dead  unprayed 
for  was  a  social  scandal. 

By  disestablishing  the  Church,  the  State  increased 
the  social  prestige  of  the  Church  tenfold.  Congre- 
gations were  more  numerous  and  edifying  than  ever 
before ;  men  took  to  going  to  mass  regularly  with  their 
womenfolk;  students  openly,  sometimes  ostentatiously, 
professed  in  large  bodies  complete  obedience  to  the 
Church;  piety,  in  school  as  well  as  in  drawing-room, 
was  creditable;  the  Church  banned  a  fashionable 
dance  and  it  instantly  became  vulgar,  put  an  author 
on  the  Index  Expurgatorius  and  society  no  longer 
read  him.  A  French  moderate  Republican  salon  of 
199 


FRANCE 

the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  would  have 
been  shocked  by  the  free  thought  of  an  eighteenth 
century  salon  of  soon-to-be  "heretofores"  and  guil- 
lotined. Nor  was  the  instant  revival  of  Church  influ- 
ence at  disestablishment  only  an  empty  and  small 
fashion;  it  spread  throughout  the  soberest  bour- 
geoisie, slowest  to  nibble  at  fashions,  and  it  was  any- 
thing but  barren,  for  it  not  only  compensated  the 
Church  at  once  for  the  loss  of  State  stipends  to  the 
clergy,  but  brought  in,  through  funds  regularly  ad- 
ministered by  organized  associations  of  laymen  gen- 
erally under  ecclesiastical  guidance,  more  money  than 
the  Church  had  ever  got  from  State  and  voluntary 
contributions  combined.  The  dispersal  of  the  regular 
orders  did  not  affect  the  influence  of  the  Church  among 
the  owning  classes.  The  secular  clergy  observed  the 
emigration  of  their  regular  rivals  with  no  chagrin, 
the  competition  between  the  two  being  an  ancient  quar- 
rel in  the  Church  and  in  all  Roman  Catholic  countries, 
and  the  former  having  often  in  past  history  sought 
the  support  of  Crown  and  State  against  the  latter. 

Among  earners  and  among  the  peasantry  the 
Church  has  not  gained,  but  it  has  not  yet  perceptibly 
lost,  influence  by  being  no  longer  the  State  Church. 
Upon  the  former  its  hold  had  long  been  small ;  it  was 
fragmentary  and  adventitious,  it  depended  chiefly 
upon  the  power  and  influence  of  great  labor  employ- 
SCO 


FRANCE 

crs,  masterful  or  winning  or  both,  working  for  the 
Church,  or  perhaps  upon  the  spell  of  a  great  priest 
here  and  there,  a  born  shepherd  that  always  finds  a 
flock.  It  had  not  for  long  been  a  general  and  direct 
grasp  of  Christianity  over  the  toiler.  To  the  peas- 
antry that  remains  religious  the  Church  was  and  is  its 
traditions,  its  gray  stone  church,  its  graveyard  with 
neat  tombs  and  bead  wreaths,  its  ceremonies,  proces- 
sions, banners,  chants  and  village  bands,  and  "Not' 
Cure/'  a  peasant  and  yet  not  a  peasant,  one  of  them 
yet  not  of  them,  human  like  them,  yet  not  altogether 
human  like  them,  the  wonderful  village  cure  of  Ma- 
dame Bovary,  running  bluff  and  serene  after  drats 
of  Sunday-school  urchins,  while  Emma  Bovary  wants 
to  confess  her  complicated  and  ingenuous  perversities. 
M.  le  Cure  has  lost  his  status  as  one  having  author- 
ity from  the  temporal  as  well  as  the  spiritual  power.  In 
the  long  run  that  may  undermine  him  in  some  villages. 
But  he  has  already  left  villages  where  the  Church, 
which  husbands  her  forces  and  her  funds  very  sensibly, 
thought  it  not  worth  the  expense  of  keeping  him. 
Where  it  was  worth  her  while  to  keep  him  on,  not 
only  in  the  pious  peasantry  but  in  the  peasantry  that 
simply  clings  to  its  gray  stone  church,  it  does  not 
look  as  if  he  will  cease  to  be  "Not'  Cure,"  nor  as  if 
the  little  gray  church  will  cease  to  mean  some  peace- 
fulness  even  to  the  peasant  who  does  not  "practise" 
201 


FRANCE 

religion  but  only  looks  up  at  its  shy,  sweet  old  spire 
when  he  comes  from  the  fields  to  the  wineshop  and 
goes  from  the  wineshop  home. 

The  future  of  Christian  faith  in  France  is  not  a 
French  problem,  but  part  of  a  world  problem  which 
no  one  can  solve.  Christianity  was  first  and  most 
vigorously  sapped  in  France;  but  that  is  no  reason 
why,  if  the  Christian  gods  ever  die,  they  should  die 
first  in  France  and  the  cities  in  which  new  gods  be 
crowned  be  the  French  cities.  The  immediate  French 
question  is  one  less  of  Christian  faith  than  of  social 
organization  by  the  Christian  Church.  That  organi- 
zation certainly  is  and  long  will  be  the  chief  care  of 
the  Church  of  Rome,  which  is  the  preponderant  Chris- 
tian Church  in  France  without  a  rival  that  counts, 
and  the  social  activity  of  the  Church  was  greatly 
stimulated  by  disestablishment. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


FRANCE  has  proportionately  the  smallest  solely 
wage-earning  class  of  any  country.  She  has  a  large 
population  of  wage-earners,  but  a  very  large  propor- 
tion, perhaps  most,  of  it  does  not  depend  upon  wages 
alone  for  a  living.  If  unskilled  labor  and  certain 
kinds  of  skilled  labor  be  deducted,  it  is  certain  that  a 
majority  of  French  wage-earners  will  be  found  to  be 
owners.  The  ordinary  navvy,  the  coal  miner,  the  fac- 
tory hand  in  certain  large  industrial  centers,  live  from 
hand  to  mouth  in  France  as  in  most  other  countries ; 
they  are  solely  wage-earners.  In  nearly  all  other 
trades  and  industries  the  French  employer  employs  a 
man  or  woman  with  capital,  a  tiny  capital,  behind  him. 
Your  general  cook  in  Paris  has  a  few  thousand  francs 
in  railway  shares  or  rentes;  mine  consults  me  peri- 
odically about  her  investments.  The  waiter  at  your 
favorite  cafe  asks  your  opinion  on  Spanish  Govern- 
ment stock,  in  which  he  has  put  his  savings.  At  the 
Quai  d'Orsay  I  had  two  most  amiably  unbending 
friends  among  the  suave  and  majestic  footmen  who 
have  the  diplomatic  traditions  and  know  how  to  open 
203 


FRANCE 

half  a  door  to  Ministers  plenipotentiary,  but  to  throw, 
with  a  swift  unbolting  top  and  bottom,  the  double 
doors  open  of  the  stately  rooms  in  the  Ministry  of 
Foreign  Affairs  to  Ambassadors  and  "personages 
thereto  assimilated.'*  At  intervals  between  diplomatic 
cares  they  asked  me  (being  supposed  to  know  the 
affairs  of  Europe)  what  I  really  thought  of  Balkan 
loans,  and  one  was  particularly  anxious  about  Turkish 
6sheries.  Both  had  their  own  savings,  their  wife's 
dower  and  their  daughters'  future  dower  invested  in 
foreign  Government  securities,  as  became  footmen  of 
the  Foreign  Office.  They  would  have  been  dum- 
founded  if  I  had  been  surprised  that  ushers  of  the 
Quai  d'Orsay,  paid  two  hundred  francs  a  month"  or 
so,  should  have  capital  to  invest. 

Wage-earners  are  divided  in  France  as  in  most 
countries  into  three  types,  the  clerk  who  wears  a  black 
coat,  the  skilled  artisan,  the  unskilled  laborer.  Df 
these  three,  it  is  curious  that  the  peculiar  condition 
governing  labor  in  France,  the  great  division  of  capi- 
tal, affects  mainly  the  second.  Unskilled  labor  of 
course  owns  the  smallest  share  of  the  capital  dissemi- 
nated throughout  the  nation.  But  the  black-coated 
shop  clerk  owns  less  than  what  one  would  think  to  be 
his  share  of  it.  In  class  spirit  and  in  habit  of  mind 
he  approaches  nearest  of  all  wage-earners  to  the  class 
that  owns  and  he  is  on  the  fringe  of  the  petite  bour- 
geoisie. The  navvy  in  shirt  and  baggy  corduroys 
204 


FRANCE 

calls  him  contemptuously  a  bourgeois.  The  stout  lady 
behind  the  counter  of  the  little  cafe  where  he  plays 
cards  at  la  manille  from  six  to  seven  classes  him  as 
a  bourgeois,  and  the  little  cafe — in  democratic  France 
— would  sniff  at  an  artisan  in  his  working  clothes, 
who  must  go  to  the  marcTiand  de  vim.  The  shop 
clerk  derives  so  much  prestige  from  his  black  coat, 
and  that  is  about  the  sum  of  the  advantages  he  gets 
from  it.  Otherwise,  being  cheap,  it  is  shoddy  and 
does  not  keep  the  cold  out  or  wear  half  so  well  as  cor- 
duroys, and  it  sets  the  mark  upon  its  man  of  a  class 
to  which  he  is  thought,  and  to  which  he  has  the  mine?, 
but  not  the  means,  to  belong. 

The  London  city  clerk,  badly  paid,  crushed  by 
competition,  forced  to  "keep  up  appearances,"  is 
worse  off  than  the  English  coal  miner.  The  Paris 
wage-earner  in  a  black  coat,  happier  in  some  ways — 
thanks  chiefly  to  his  little  cafe — than  he  would  be  in 
London,  is  less  happy  in  one,  his  unfortunate  pro- 
pinquity to  a  class  scarcely  known  in  England,  the 
little  bourgeoisie  that  owns  little  but  owns,  and  of 
which  he  is  not  but  unluckily  seems  to  be.  How  his 
particular  species  arose  in  France  it  is  not  easy  to 
determine.  In  a  nation  where  ownership  is  not  of  the 
ifew  but  of  the  majority,  his  class,  though  far  from 
the  bottom  of  the  social  scale,  owns  generally  nothing. 
In  its  families,  the  father  is  a  paid  employee,  and  often 
the  mother  also  ;  the  boy  follows  in  his  father's  f oot- 
205 


FRANCE 

steps,  the  girl  until  she  marries  (if  she  has  the  luck 
to  marry)  is  one  of  those  patterns  of  hardworkingness 
and  strength  of  mind  who  labor  ten  hours  a  day  fash- 
ioning the  most  exquisite  woman's  luxuries  of  Paris 
and  to  whom  no  temptation  is  spared.  The  glorious 
customers  she  makes  for  were  often  work  girls  like  her 
a  year  or  two  ago ;  but  one  hears  of  those  who  "arrive" 
thus,  not  of  the  thousands  who  would  not  start  that 
way,  though  to  and  from  work  they  walked  the  Rue 
de  la  Paix  every  day.  The  girl,  offered  everything 
that  tempts  a  girl,  trudging  gaily,  laughing  at  mud 
and  rain,  at  splashing  and  death-dealing  motor-cars, 
to  her  Metro,  laughing  again  at  the  wild  crush  and 
rude  discomfort  of  the  train,  going  back  cheerily  to 
her  drab  mean  home,  to  the  tired  father,  the  snappish 
mother,  the  brother  who  wants  to  be  out  of  it  all  and 
in  the  gay  life,  is  a  good  girl.  The  poor  mean  home 
owns  nothing  but  its  wages.  It  never  seems  to  be  able 
to  put  by,  and  the  homes  that  went  before  it  do  not 
seem  to  have  put  by. 

The  smallest  shopkeeper  started  from  some  saving 
and,  if  he  succeeds  at  all,  saves  more.  He  is  of  the 
bourgeoisie  that  owns.  The  clerks  make  up  the  black- 
coated  "proletariat,"  called  "bourgeois"  and  not  of 
the  bourgeoisie,  kept  at  arms'  length  by  the  laborer 
anil  looked  down  upon  secretly  by  the  very  lady  be- 
hind the  little  cafe  counter,  who  for  her  part  is  no 
mere  wage-earner  without  substance.  The  French, 
206 


FRANCE 

especially  the  Paris,  clerk,  almost  an  anomaly  in 
French  life,  and  the  much  more  likely  product  of  a 
society  in  which  much  fewer  owned  and  many  more 
earned,  is  perhaps  the  most  defenseless  element  in  the 
general  French  people.  The  little  bourgeoisie  has 
that  strongest  of  defenses,  capital,  however  small; 
the  laborer  who  lives  from  hand  to  mouth  has  some 
combining  organization  behind  him,  even  if  it  be  com- 
paratively loose  and  powerless.  The  black-coated 
wage-earners  are  scarcely  organized  at  all;  trade 
unions  hold  them  aloof  because  of  the  black  coat ;  the 
very  conditions  of  their  employment  prevent  common 
action,  they  are  hangers-on  to  the  owning  class,  the 
employer  may  at  any  time  choose  one  employee  for 
promotion  to  command  a  large  salary  and  eventually 
a  share  in  the  business.  The  ordinary  clerk  who  re- 
mains one  all  his  life  is  the  most  helpless  of  wage- 


II 


The  skilled  French  artisan  is  the  aristocrat  of  wage- 
earners.  To  begin  with,  he  is  seldom  only  a  wage- 
earner.  The  cabinet-maker,  the  artist  in  artificial  flow- 
ers, the  expert  who  makes  new  cabinets  look  like  old, 
the  furrier  who  turns  rabbit  into  Russian  sable,  hardly 
ever  work  without  a  little  substance  of  capital  to  go 
upon.  They  work  upon  a  solid  basis,  they  build  up 
small  businesses  carefully,  they  touch  the  bourgeoisie 
207 


FRANCE 

by  realities,  not  by  the  black  coat.  They  form  a  class 
entirely  (distinct  from  that  of  the  ordinary  laborer: 
a  fact  of  great  import  in  French  labor  problems,  and 
in  part  unfavorable  to  the  future  of  French  labor. 
They  are  skilled  artisans,  sometimes  artists  (their 
"faking"  of  furniture  is  marvelous)  and  they  do  not 
rub  shoulders  with  the  common  worker  whose  defini- 
tion is  that  among  half  a  dozen  trades  he  can  pass 
from  one  to  another  without  effort. 

The  real  artisan  has  only  one  trade.  In  France  he 
still  retains  some  traditions  from  the  craftsmen  of 
old:  the  Faubourg  St.  Antoine  keeps  splendidly  honest 
workers  in  carpentry  still,  though  badly  led  astray  by 
designers  of  spurious  "art"  furniture.  There  art 
even  artist  cobblers  and  one  is  now  almost  historic  who, 
being  arrested  for  an  Anarchist,  refused  to  go  with 
the  police  until  he  had  finished  to  his  own  liking  a 
pair  of  shoes,  ordered  no  doubt  by  a  not  at  all  An- 
archist customer.  These  artisans — Anarchist  or  not, 
but,  when  Anarchist,  only  by  artistic  temperament — 
keep  clear  of  the  mere  laborers. 

The  aristocracy  of  the  artisan  is  one  of  the  most 
important  elements  in  the  problems  of  French  labor. 
According  to  the  point  of  view,  it  is  a  fortunate  or 
unfortunate  thing  for  the  future  of  French  labor. 
The  artisan,  or  at  least  the  most  skilled  artisan,  has 
never  yet  taken  to  the  policy  of  common  action.  With 
few  exceptions,  those  for  instance  of  electricians  and 
208 


FRANCE 

engine-drivers  (but  the  latter  had  only  one  experience 
of  common  action  which  was  a  defeat)  the  highly 
skilled  worker  will  not  throw  in  his  lot  in  France  with 
the  less  skilled.  The  good  cabinet-maker,  the  good 
locksmith,  the  excellent  maker  of  Louis  XV  arm- 
chairs still  take  up  an  extreme  Conservative  attitude 
toward  Trade  Unionism.  It  is  very  usual  all  over 
France  to  be  told  by  the  serious  and  solid  artisan, 
"Union?  they  are  for  the  ne'er-do-wells.  What  do 
men  like  me  want  with  them?"  He  holds  aloof  both 
through  caution  and  through  an  aristocratic  sense; 
he  sees  mostly  perils  in  wide  combination,  and  even 
for  obvious  advantages  could  scarcely  overcome  his 
repugnance  to  the  offer  that  he  should  combine  with 
inferior  workers  merely  because  they  and  he  work  with 
their  hands. 

If  in  the  labor  world  the  spirit  of  united  action  be 
the  equivalent  of  the  public  spirit  In  the  larger  world, 
he  has  not  that  public  spirit.  Looked  at  from  a  dif- 
ferent— not  rightly  the  opposite — point  of  view,  he 
has  another  spirit,  that  of  social  preservation.  He  is, 
after  all,  nearer  to  the  small  bourgeoisie  that  owns 
than  to  the  labor  world,  and  nearer  to  it  really  than 
the  black-coated  clerk  is.  That  is  one  of  the  under- 
lying facts  that  complicate  French  labor  problems. 
The  influence  of  the  bourgeoisie,  the  great  people  that 
owns  little  individually  but  owns,  is  felt  throughout 
the  nation.  The  artisan  aristocracy,  owning  or  not, 
209 


FRANCE 

and  it  often  owns,  is  drawn  toward  the  bourgeoisie, 
not  toward  merely  wage-earning  labor,  aims  at  taking 
its  place  in  the  former,  not  at  guiding  the  latter. 
That  is  a  secret  of  French  social  solidity,  and  a 
secret  of  the  weakness  of  French  labor  movements. 
The  good  artisan  would  rather  be  a  little  bourgeois 
than  a  labor  leader.  I  have  often  heard  him  say  bit- 
ingly,  "They  can  afford  to  agitate,  they  have  noth- 
ing," meaning  that  he  had  something. 


Ill 


The  only  organized  labor  in  France  is  labor  that 
owns  nothing.  This  is  no  doubt  more  or  less  true  of 
most  countries:  in  England,  particularly,  the  most 
powerful  Trade  Unions,  which  are  collectively  often 
wealthy,  are  made  up  of  members  who  individually 
live  from  hand  to  mouth,  have  no  property  behind 
them,  put  by  nothing  even  of  high  wages,  and  every 
Saturday  morning  are  paupers,  save  for  their  furni- 
ture, their  clothes  and  their  vested  interest  in  the 
Union,  until  the  pay  hour  comes  round.  But  in 
France  the  position  of  labor  is  different  from  what  it 
is  in  almost  all  other  countries.  The  highly  paid 
artisan  is  seldom  without  thrift  and  therefore  seldom 
owns  nothing.  Between  the  man  who  owns  nothing 
and  one  who  owns  however  little,  there  is  a  chasm  that 
does  not  exist  in  other  nations.  The  highly  skilled 
210 


FRANCE 

English  artisan  would  not  dream  of  being  ashamed 
to  have  put  nothing  by  and  to  have  no  more  "stake  in 
the  country"  save  his  better  brains,  training  and  trade 
connection  than  the  plain  navvy. 

In  the  French  people  not  to  have  "one  brave  sou" 
is  always  something  of  a  disgrace.  Thrift  and  the 
ties  that  keep  a  large  part  of  the  wage-earning  class 
tacked  on  to  the  fringe  of  the  little  bourgeoisie  create 
special  labor  conditions  in  France;  these  causes  pre- 
cisely drive  away  from  social  preservation  the  other 
class  of  wage-earners,  who  do  not  own  and  do  not  save. 
Where  a  strong  and  rich  Trade  Union  is  composed  as 
in  England  of  men  who  individually  own  nothing,  the 
unskilled  and  low-paid  wage-earner  does  not  feel  a  pa- 
riah, and  combination  rather  steadies  than  excites  him, 
leads  him  to  society  instead  of  away  from  it.  In 
French  labor,  the  highly  skilled,  well-paid  and  often 
owning  artisan  fights  shy,  barring  some  important 
exceptions,  from  combination;  organized  labor  is  or- 
ganized by  the  thriftless,  the  hot-heads,  the  devil-may- 
cares,  who,  being  outside  the  pale  of  workers  on  the 
fringe  of  the  bourgeoisie,  go  resolutely  against  social 
preservation. 

The  psychology  of  French  wage-earners  accounts 
for  the  position  of  labor  problems  in  France.  The 
clerk  in  his  black  coat  is  almost  entirely  outside  any 
common  action  of  labor ;  the  most  skilled  artisans  are 
drawn  into  such  action  only  seldom  and  reluctantly ; 


FRANCE 

less  skilled  or  unskilled  labor  forms  the  bulk  of  con- 
certed and  organized  labor.  How  will  the  greatest 
problem  of  the  modern  world  work  out  for  this  par- 
ticular nation?  Trade  Unions,  nearly  half  a  century 
younger  in  France,  where  they  were  long  forbidden  by 
law,*  than  in  England,  have  never  in  France  possessed 
power  as  measured  by  money.f  They  have  held  and 
intermittently  hold  political  power.  The  word  Syn- 
dicalism was  coined  in  France:  it  originally  meant 
exactly  the  same  thing  as  Trade  Unionism,  there  be- 
ing no  other  translation  into  French  of  "Trade 
Union"  than  "Syndicate."  Driven  by  French  logic 
and  not  held  back,  for  reasons  noted  above,  by  French 
social  realism,  "Syndicalism"  emerged  into  a  theory 
of  social  revolution,  communism  containing  a  number 
of  equally  sovereign  unions,  each  union  of  workers 
seizing  the  total  means  of  production  in  its  trade,  the 
sovereign  groups  combining  to  insure  the  working 
of  the  new  society.  Syndicalism  thus  was  simply  trade 
unionism  carried  to  its  extreme  logical  conclusion,  but 
only  French  labor  leaders  thought  of  carrying  it 
thither. 

The  theory  of  Syndicalism,  come  from  France,  ex- 
ercised great  influence  upon  labor  movements  all  over 

*  In.  1881-2  laws  sanctioning  "professional  syndicates," 
but  with  practically  prohibitive  clauses  regarding  their 
ownership  of  property.  In  1901  "Associations  law"  (Wai- 
deck-Rousseau)  granting  ownership  rights  on  property. 

t  In  1906  the  average  annual  Income  of  the  General  Labor 
Federation  was  48,875  francs. 


FRANCE 

the  world.  In  practise  French  Syndicalism  at  home 
achieved  a  great  deal  less  than  the  old  steady  Trade 
Unions  of  England.  No  labor  uphea veals  in  modern 
times  anywhere,  certainly  not  in  France,  equaled  the 
great  coal  strike  and  railway  strike  in  England. 
French  mining  strikes  have  always  been  partial  and 
generally  futile;  the  postal  strike  of  1909  counted 
because  public  servants  rebelled;  the  railway  strike 
of  1910  threw  the  business  of  the  country  out  of  gear 
for  a  few  days,  but  the  Government*  called  out  rail- 
way servants  as  reservists  by  mobilization  orders, 
making  them  liable  to  martial  law,  and  there  was  no 
more  strike. 

French  Syndicalism  had  mistaken  its  strength  and 
strained  it,  whereas  English  Trade  Unions  had  hus- 
banded theirs  and  used  it,  knowing  what  they  were 
about.  It  is  essential  to  understand  the  parallel  his- 
tory of  the  labor  movement  and  of  Parliamentary 
Socialism  in  France.  French  Trade  Unionism  and  the 
French  Parliamentary  Socialist  party  have  never 
worked  in  harmony.  French  Members  of  Parliament, 
being  paid,  have  never  had  to  call  upon  a  Union  for 
a  salary ;  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  they  would  ever 
have  got  one.  The  antagonism  between  Trade  Union- 


*  M.  Briand,  the  Prime  Minister,  had  previously  been  a 
Syndicalist  himself.  In  1899  he  told  a  Socialist  Congress 
to  go  to  battle  with  voting  papers  If  they  liked,  but  also, 
if  they  liked,  with  "pikes,  swords,  pistols,  rifles,"  against 
the  bourgeois. 


FRANCE 

ism  and  Parliamentary  Socialism  dates  far  back,  and 
it  was  an  early  contention  of  the  former  that  Mem- 
bers of  Parliament  as  such  should  not  be  accepted  as 
delegates  to  Labor  Congresses,  a  Parliamentary  con- 
stituency not  being  held  equivalent  to  a  union.  I 
recollect  an  International  Labor  Congress  in  the  nine- 
tics  at  which  the  French  section  split  into  two  violently 
quarreling  parts  upon  that  question,  and  the  side  that 
objected  to  Members  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies — 
M.  Jaures  and  others  being  qualified  as  delegates 
when  they  represented  only  Parliamentary  constitu- 
encies and  not  Trade  Unions  as  well — included  several 
delegates  supposed  to  represent  unions  which  had  in 
fact  little  or  no  existence.* 

Anti-Parliamentarianism  is  a  tendency  that  exists 
in  all  labor  parties  in  the  world.  In  France  it  has 
some  peculiar  traits.  In  the  birthplace  of  Trade 
Unionism,  England,  the  union  was  an  old  and  power- 
ful organization  before  a  Parliamentary  Labor  party 
was  thought  of;  the  union,  for  many  years,  while  a 
strong  weapon  for  the  cause  of  labor,  was  also,  be- 
cause it  had  a  history  and  vested  interests,  a  retarding 
or  at  least  a  preserving  force,  a  brake  upon  the  wheel, 
and  labor  in  England  has  sometimes  rebelled  pre- 
cisely against  the  conservative  authority  of  its  unions. 

*  A  student  at  the  time,  I  am  sorry  to  say  that,  though 
an  Englishman,  I  was  the  official  delegate  at  that  particular 
International  Labor  Congress  of  one  of  those  phantom 
French  Trade  Unions. 


FRANCE 

In  France  the  Parliamentary  Socialist  party  is  as  old 
as  Trade  Unionism  and  prospered  more.*  Far  from 
being  the  restraining  influence,  the  Syndicates  have 
always  been  the  goad  and  have  usually  driven  the 
Parliamentary  Socialist  party  faster  than  it  meant  to 
go.  At  one  time  this  party  had  almost  reached  Cabi- 
net power  ;f  it  was  on  the  verge  of  being  called  upon 
to  build  at  last,  and  French  Socialism  in  Parliament 
might  have  been  the  first  in  the  world  to  be  given  the 
chance  in  an  anciently  organized  nation  to  show  what 
building  or  rebuilding  it  could  do. 

Whether  French  Socialism  was  wrong  in  rejecting 
the  chance  or  right  in  thinking  with  international 
Socialism  that  the  time  was  not  ripe,  could  be  long  dis- 
cussed. My  point  is  that  the  French  Parliamentary 
Socialist  party,  and  not  least  M.  Jaures,  believed  then 
in  taking  the  chance,  but  was  overruled  by  French 

*  Unified  Socialists  in  Chamber:  1906,  54;  1910,  75; 
1314,  101. 

t  Under  the  administration  of  M.  Combes  (1902-1905)  the 
Socialist  party,  not  then  "unified,"  formed  the  Bloc  with 
the  Radicals  and  certain  Moderate  Republicans.  The  Bloc 
had  originally  been  formed  by  the  Republican  coalition 
against  "Nationalism"  and  other  Conservative  parties  more 
or  less  Anti-Republican,  and  had  arisen  out  of  the  definite 
championship  of  the  cause  of  Dreyfus  by  the  Republican 
majority  led  by  "Waldeck-Rousseau.  During  the  Combes  ad- 
ministration, Moderate  Republicans  soon  left  the  Bloc.  The 
International  Socialist  Congress  of  Amsterdam  (1904)  or- 
dered that  no  Socialist  should  enter  into  compact  with  a 
"bourgeois"  or  "capitalist"  Government.  The  French  Par- 
liamentary Socialist  party  was  "unified"  upon  this  pledge, 
the  "unification"  of  M.  Jaur£s,  just  because  of  his  connec- 
tion with  the  Bloc,  being  long  demurred  at  but  finally 
decided. 

215 


FRANCE 

Trade  Unionism,  which  was  not  the  brake  on  the 
wheel  but  the  accelerator.  Un-"unified"  M.  Jaures, 
above  all  a  consummate  political  tactician,  might  have 
been  the  Prime  Minister,  and  (with  some  compromises 
of  course)  the  Socialist  Prime  Minister,  of  France. 
As  it  was,  the  Parliamentary  Socialist  party,  once 
"unified,"  was  relentlessly  driven  by  the  Syndicates. 
In  all  the  labor  agitation  culminating  in  the  railway 
strike  of  1910  the  numerically  powerful  Socialist 
party  in  Parliament  never  led,  but  was  driven,  and 
offered  the  undignified  spectacle  of  a  supposed  brain 
not  only  not  commanding  the  limbs,  but  not  knowing 
what  the  limbs  would  do  next,  and  not  only  that,  but 
pretending,  whenever  they  did  anything,  to  have  or- 
dered it. 

At  the  lull  in  labor  agitation,  the  positions  remained 
about  the  same.  Trade  Unionism  and  Parliamentary 
Socialism  were  as  jealous  of  each  other  as  before,  and 
many  other  smaller  splits*  continued.  French  Social- 
ism as  yet  shows  no  signs  of  any  such  organizing 
capacity  as  leads  to  victory.  The  Parliamentary  So- 

*  In  1914,  in  Paris,  L'Humanit6  was  M.  Jaures'  paper,  i.  e., 
that  of  the  Unified  Socialist  party  in  Parliament;  La  Ba- 
taille  Syndicaliste  that  of  the  C.  G.  T.  or  general  Labor 
Federation  and  of  the  Revolutionary  Trade  Unions;  and 
La  Guerre  Sociale  that  of  M.  Gustave  Hervg,  ex-teacher, 
once  a  militant  anti-militarist,  afterward  a  Socialist  "on 
his  own,"  still  violent.  All  three  newspapers  were  quite  as 
violent  against  each  other  as  various  Royalist  newspapers 
were  against  one  another.  To-day,  of  course,  UHumanite, 
La  Bataille  (it  has  dropped  "Syndicaliste"),  and  La  Guerre 
Sociale,  which  became  La  Victorie  on  January  1,  1916,  are 
all  against  the  Boches. 

216 


FRANCE 

ciallst  party  will  steadily  if  slowly  increase  in  num- 
bers, but  its  influence  does  not  increase  with  its  num- 
bers, and  it  was  more  numerous  than  ever  before 
when  it  was  ignored  by  Syndicalism  during  the  labor 
agitation  at  the  beginning  of  the  century.  Will 
Syndicalism  and  the  Syndicates  increase  in  power? 
More  votes  for  Socialist  Members  of  Parliament  pre- 
cisely do  not  mean  more  strength  to  Trade  Unionism. 
Many  a  worker  who  by  temperament  and  way  of  liv- 
ing is  essentially  conservative  gives  his  vote  to  the 
Socialist  candidate  by  tradition — Socialism  has  be- 
come a  tradition.  He  does  not  dream  of  joining  revo- 
lutionary Syndicalism,  will  think  twice  before  joining 
any  Syndicate,  and  will  first  ascertain  it  to  be  quite 
safe  and  solid,  solid  as  his  own  business. 

Syndicalism  has  indeed  some  forces  behinb!  it:  a 
proportion  of  elementary  school-teachers  for  instance, 
who  count  the  more  because  they  are  Government  serv- 
ants and  because  they  teach.  They  may  possibly 
teach  revolutionary  syndicalism  to  new  generations ; 
the  Church,  by  Anti-Republican  teaching,  plays,  as 
usual,  into  the  hands  of  revolutionists.  But  the 
French  village  school-teacher  as  a  rule  comes  from  a 
curious  class,  neither  peasant  nor  artisan  by  descent, 
neither  farmer  nor  townsman,  a  half-baked,  rudi- 
mentary intellectual  class.  It  has  no  ties  with  the 
village,  it  is  not  of  the  country,  it  owns  no  fields. 
There  seems  little  likelihood  that  the  village  school- 

217 


FRANCE 

master,  often  a  diminutive  Robespierre  by  tempera- 
ment, is  really  forming  young  revolutionary  minds  in 
France.  If  the  social  revolution  comes  in  France, 
some  of  the  teachers  will  perhaps  have  helped  it.  Fac- 
tory hands  will  have  made  it,  but  they  will  not  make 
it  until,  having,  to  begin  with,  paid  their  subscriptions 
to  their  Unions,  they  learn  what  real  organization 
means,  until  Syndicalism  has  become  practical,  ef- 
ficient and  as  realist  as  the  Syndicalist  is  in  his  own 
every-day  life,  and  until  those  who  profess  to  work 
for  a  new  French  society  have  ceased  to  work  against 
one  another,  the  Unions  to  goad  the  Parliamentary  So- 
cialist party,  the  Parliamentary  Socialist  party  to  sit 
upon  the  Unions.  But  even  that  will  not  suppress  the 
French  peasant;  while  he  owns  his  field  it  is  difficult 
to  think  that  there  will  ever  be  a  social  revolution  in 
France.  If  it  comes  it  will  anyhow  not  include  na- 
tionalization of  the  soil.  If  ever  the  French  Syndical- 
ist go  to  the  French  peasant  and  propose  him  that,  I 
pity  the  French  Syndicalist  under  the  pitchforks. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

OWNERS 


BY  these  I  mean  the  great  people  of  the  FrencH 
bourgeoisie.  Others  own — the  peasant  on  the  land, 
the  few  great  landlords,  the  financial  king  or  the  finan- 
cial adventurer.  The  two  classes  that  have  real  sense 
of  ownership  in  France  are  the  peasantry  and  the 
bourgeoisie.  Other  owners  own  to  spend.  These  two 
classes  are  first  of  all  and  above  all  possessors.  J5[itK 
the  peasantry  the  bourgeoisie  is  the  backbone  of 
France.  Conditions  of  life  change  in  France  as  else- 
where; the  bourgeoisie  remains,  and  probably  has 
increased,  not  diminished,  in  actual  numbers  and  in 
deep  influence. 

What  is  the  bourgeoisie?  It  has  no  exact  equiva- 
lent in  any  other  country.  It  is  not  the  English  or 
'German  middle  class,  not  the  Russian  merchant  class. 
Let  me  try  to  catalogue  and  define  the  characteristics 
of  the  bourgeois  proper.  He  must  own,  and  he  must 
have  owned.  He  must  have  at  least  a  generation  or 
two  of  bourgeoisie  behind  him ;  a  real  bourgeois  is 
not  made  in  one.  He  may  follow  one  of  the  so-called 
"liberal"  professions,  nowadays  he  may  even  practise 
219 


FRANCE 

one  of  the  arts,  as  his  calling ;  they  do  not  disqualify 
him  if  his  backing  and  substance  be  of  the  bour- 
geoisie. Indeed  most  modern  French  artists  are  bour- 
geois by  connections  and  descent,  which  is  a  good  tiling 
for  their  bread  and  butter,  whatever  it  may  be  for 
their  art.  The  bourgeois  of  to-day  may  be  an  artist 
without  fear ;  the  artist  in  his  youth  is  afraid  to  be  a 
bourgeois,  only  afterward  he  discovers  that  few  mas- 
ters were  real  Bohemians. 

But  even  the  bourgeois  of  to-day  must  remain  a 
bourgeois ;  in  modern  democratic  France  the  tradition 
is  as  strong  as  ever.  M.  Durand,  calling  himself 
du  Rand,  then  after  five  years  or  so  du  Rand  de  la 
Durandiere,  cuts  liimself  off  from  the  real  bour- 
geoisie ;  even  a  papal  marquisate,  honestly  purchased 
for  ten  thousand  francs  or  so,  cuts  him  off.  I  knew 
a  Durand  who  in  his  plain  Durand  father's  lifetime 
called  himself  Count  du  Rand.  When  his  father  died 
still  plain  Durand,  he  promoted  himself  Marquis  du 
Rand,  Count  being  the  courtesy  title  of  a  Marquis's 
son.  I  knew  another  son  of  a  less  easy-going  Durand 
who  in  his  fierce  old  bourgeois  father's  lifetime  did 
not  dare  be  aught  but  Durand;  a  month  after  his 
father's  death  he  became  du  Rand  de  la  Durandiere; 
six  months  after  he  was  D.  de  la  Durandiere,  and  a 
year  later  and  ever  after  he  was  Monsieur  de  la  Du- 
randiere. It  should  be  understood  that  the  real 
French  bourgeoisie  has  certainly  as  much  contempt 
220 


FRANCE 

as  the  real  French  aristocracy  for  the  Durands  de  la 
Durandiere.  On  the  whole  I  should  say  that  the 
French  bourgeoisie  has  more  solid  and  ancient  pride 
of  caste  than  nine-tenths  of  the  French  aristocracy, 
and  as  much  as  the  ancient  remaining  tenth,  which  is 
as  exclusive  as  the  most  exclusive  in  Europe.  There 
are  so  many  de  la  Durandieres  that  the  bourgeoisie 
is  inclined  to  look  upon  every  "de"  as  spurious  a 
priori  until  proved  genuine,  and  to  question  whether 
any  title  is  even  papal  that  is  not  proved  by  repute. 
In  certain  foreign  drawing-rooms  in  Paris,  chiefly 
South  American,  everybody  is  "Marquis"  or  at  least 
"Count" — very  few  venturing  to  be  "Duke."  The 
French  bourgeoisie  would  not  be  seen  in  those  draw- 
ing-rooms, and  there  is  no  plain  M.  Durand  there ;  he 
is  too  proud.  Even  toward  the  "de"  that  is  genuine 
and  the  titles  that  are  not  papal,  plain  M.  Durand  is 
proud.  In  the  democratic  France  of  to-day  the  old 
bourgeoisie  has  retained  some  hostility  against  even 
the  aristocracy  that  is  really  old.  It  might  have  been 
expected  and  it  might  have  seemed  natural  that  in  the 
changes  of  time  the  old  bourgeoisie  should  have  j  oined 
the  old  aristocracy,  if  not  against  common  enemies, 
still  to  defend  a  broadly  common  cause,  but  that  has 
not  happened  or  only  as  an  exception.  The  bour- 
geoisie has  remained  distinct,  even  the  oldest  and 
wealthiest  bourgeoisie,  from  the  descendants  of  the 
old  aristocracy.  It  often  pursues  the  same  conserva- 


FRANCE 

tive  ends  and  professes  the  same  social  conservatism 
as  the  families  who  hark  back  frankly  to  the  Mon- 
archy before  the  first  Revolution,  but  it  has  never 
thrown  in  its  lot  with  these,  and  rarely  even  has 
rubbed  with  them  at  all  or  worked  socially  or  politi- 
cally side  by  side  with  them. 


The  bourgeois  to  be  a  real  bourgeois  must  be  an 
honest  plain  French  citizen  with  a  definite  place  in  the 
social  system  of  France.  No  adventurers,  no  traveler 
from  lands  of  adventure  or  bound  thither,  no  wan- 
derer, no  marginal  members  of  society  need  seek  ad- 
mittance: the  bourgeoisie  is  a  close  corporation  in 
which  every  one's  social  status  is  clearly  known  and 
can  be  proved  and  almost  every  one's  thought  is  pre- 
ordained also. 

The  light  changing  waves  of  irregular  life  that 
splash  amusingly  through  half  Parisian  society  are 
shut  off  from  the  bourgeoisie  by  locks  almost  never 
opened.  When  the  sluice  gates  do  open,  a  stream 
flows,  soon  stemmed  again,  outward,  never  back  into 
the  bourgeoisie.  This  lives  side  by  side  with  some  of 
the  lightest,  gayest,  freest,  most  fleeting,  shifting  and 
lawless  life  in  the  world,  and  not  only  knows  no  con- 
tact with  it  but  does  not  know  it.  The  heedless  trav- 
eler does  not  learn  that  the  side  of  Paris  he  sees  is  at 
222 


FRANCE 

least  as  strange  to  the  French  bourgeoisie  as  it  is  to 
him ;  that  the  latter  looks  upon  most  of  the  Parisian 
celebrities  whose  doings  fill  the  world's  newspapers 
from  as  far  as  if  they  were  the  popular  figures  in 
China  or  Peru,  that  it  would  not  think  of  having  them 
in  its  midst,  and  that  they  find  it  infinitely  easier  to 
be  lionized  in  the  drawing-rooms  of  other  countries 
than  to  be  received  in  those  of  the  French  bourgeoisie. 
France  is  the  country  in  Europe,  at  all  events  Paris 
is  the  town,  where  the  adventurer  of  every  kind  has 
the  greatest  scope,  the  financial  adventurer,  the  social 
adventurer,  the  sexual  adventurer.  In  less  than  ten 
years  a  clever  man  may  rise  by  thrift  and  ingenuity 
first  and  by  ingenious  swindling  afterward  from  a 
small  cafe  waiter  to  wealth  and  a  commanding  posi- 
tion in  a  certain  Paris  society,  and  he  may  enjoy  both 
for  some  time  before  arrest  and  conviction.  In  the 
same  sort  of  society  a  man  may  get  on  by  the  sole 
effect  of  his  own  push ;  no  one  knows  why  every  one 
makes  way  for  him,  and  in  a  few  years  he  counts  in 
the  "Tout  Paris" ;  he  will  go  on  counting  to  the  day 
of  his  death,  and  at  first  nights,  at  private  views,  at 
sensational  art  sales  he  will  be  pointed  out — there  is 
so  and  so.  Nobody  asks  who  he  is  or  what  he  has 
done,  he  has  never  been  anything  and  the  only  thing 
he  has  ever  done  is  self-advertisement.  The  sexual 
adventurer  "arrives  by  the  women" :  a  careful  selec- 
tion o?  married  mistresses,  a  judicious  play  of  one 
223 


FRANCE 

against  the  other,  love-making  with  useful  old  ladies, 
influence  with  influential  old  gentlemen's  mistresses, 
discretion  when  his  own  mistress  pleases ;  he  is  frankly 
the  pimp  and  the  kept  man  at  once,  and  all  who  know 
that  particular  Paris  society  will  recognize  dozens  of 
him  who  have  "arrived"  in  no  other  way.  Probably 
neither  he  nor  his  fellows  would  have  got  on  so  easily 
or  so  far  in  another  country. 

But  not  all  who  recognize  him  and  them  understand 
that  he  and  they  have  not  arrived  at  all  or  even  started 
on  a  career  in  the  great  French  bourgeoisie  and  that 
to  the  latter  this  sort  of  Tout  Paris  is  as  foreign  as 
if  it  were  the  Tout  Timbuctoo.  This  is  a  result  of  the 
sharp  chasms  that  separate  French  society  to-day. 
The  writer  knowing  the  side  of  France  that  the  rest 
of  the  world  generally  sees  must  labor  to  prove  that 
in  the  bourgeoisie  of  France  the  men  are  honest  and 
the  women  respectable.  The  French  bourgeoisie  is  at 
once  so  far  from  the  adventurers  of  Paris  society  and 
so  unaware  of  foreign  opinion  that  it  would  be  dum- 
founded  to  learn  of  any  such  proof  being  made.  It 
looks  on  amused  and  unperturbed  at  the  adventures 
of  a  certain  Tout  Paris.  Its  men  are  quite  solid 
enough  to  do  without  dangerous  hazards,  its  women 
are  wives  and  mothers  and  should  they  not  be  the  lat- 
ter and  forget  they  are  the  former,  the  adventure  is 
kept  quiet,  not  advertised,  maybe  punished,  some- 
times cruelly,  not  noisily,  for  the  abundant  crimes 
224. 


FRANCE 

passionnels  of  France  seldom  happen  in  the  real  bour- 
geoisie. It  has  much  more  common  sense  than  sent- 
imentality, perhaps  than  sentiment. 

It  certainly  does  not  look  at  life  sentimentally. 
Perhaps  that  is  its  chief  virtue.  No  other  human 
group  in  the  world  has  so  strong  a  sense  of  reality. 
The  final  qualification  for  acceptance  into  the  French 
bourgeoisie  is  to  subscribe  to  the  bourgeois  philosophy 
of  life.  A  man  of  substance,  a  man  with  substantial 
forebears,  a  plain  and  honest  citizen  must  pass  the 
final  test  and  prove  himself  a  realist.  Political  ideal- 
ists plan  or  rave,  or  are  on  the  make,  poets  dream, 
artists  build  in  the  air,  hand  toilers  mutter  and  grum- 
ble, and  run  or  are  led  away  with  visions  of  the  city 
of  the  future ;  the  bourgeoisie  looks  merely  at  what  is. 
No  country  has  had  such  vigorous  revolutionists,  none 
has  such  a  resisting  class  of  realists.  It  has  only  one 
deep  religion,  the  faith  in  life.  Every  other  belief  is 
but  minister  to  that  and  feeds  that  earthly  flame. 

The  French  bourgeoisie  instinctively  judges  every 
question  by  the  same  criterion :  does  this  or  that  help 
better  living?  It  has  a  very  strong  wish  to  get  the 
best  possible  out  of  life.  It  does  not  like  social  schemes 
for  to-morrow,  and  it  will  not  hear  of  any  for  the 
day  after.  It  does  not  at  all  care  for  any  dreams  tHat 
may  tamper  with  the  facts  of  life.  Parents,  goods,  a 
wife,  children,  and  family  and  fortune  carried  on  in 
them :  notliing  is  of  any  account  compared  with  these. 
225. 


FRANCE 

No  art  or  poetry  is  to  be  measured  with  them;  the 
French  bourgeois  there  finds  all  the  dream  he  wants. 
Why  should  he  be  asked  to  want  any  other?  He  is 
true  to  his  ideal.  He  is  frank  to  all  the  facts  that  he 
requires,  and  he  blinks  none. 

HI 

There  are  many  different  kinds,  a  whole  scale,  of 
bourgeoisie,  from  the  little  bourgeois  who  sells  pins, 
ribbons,  shoelaces,  knitting  wool  and  newspapers  in 
a  tiny  shop  still  spared  by  the  Universal  Emporiums, 
to  the  great  bourgeois  who  bequeaths  his  art  collec- 
tions, half  spurious,  to  the  Louvre,  with  the  stipula- 
tion that  they  shall  be  housed  in  one  gallery  and  liis 
bust  put  on  a  pedestal  in  the  middle.  But  up  and 
down  the  scale  the  same  spirit  runs,  the  good  and  bad, 
the  ridiculous  and  the  sublime  spirit  of  bourgeoisie. 
There  is  more  moral  difference  between  the  tiny  shop- 
keeper and  the  electrician  whose  little  girl  buys  his 
two  papers,  the  Socialist  paper  and  the  paper  with 
the  best  murders  and  feuilleton,  at  the  shop  every 
morning  than  there  is  between  the  tiny  shopkeeper 
and  the  Universal  Provider.  There  is  between  the 
latter  and  the  French  aristocrat,  who  (having  won  at 
cards  from  his  friends  the  first  refusal  of  her  hand) 
marries  the  American  Dry  Goods  King's  daughter,  an 
extraordinary  difference  still  in  the  democratic  France 
of  to-dav. 

226 


FRANCE 

The  tiny  French  shopkeeper  and  the  big  French 
shopkeeper  never  look  at  life  as  a  gamble,  but  take 
it  very,  seriously.  The  gay,  intelligent,  hot-headed 
workman,  who  has  been  and  may  be  the  spark  and  fire 
of  French  revolutions,  takes  it  as  he  finds  it.  This  is 
the  sentimental  or  the  furious  people.  When  a  girl 
and  boy  light  a  charcoal  stove  and  lie  down  chastely 
together  to  die  in  a  lodging-house,  having  left  pa- 
thetic letters  explaining  that  hard  parents  denied  their 
eternally  sworn  love,  or  jump  in  front  of  an  electric 
Metropolitan  train  to  a  horrible  death,  with  the  same 
sort  of  letters  in  their  pockets,  always  printed  after- 
ward in  the  Petit  Parisien  or  the  Petit  Journal,  they 
are  boys  and  girls  not  of  the  bourgeoisie  but  of  the 
earners  who  do  not  take  life  seriously,  but  hold  it  at 
times  just  worth  a  few  knocks  with  the  police  in  a 
street  demonstration  or  a  little  sentiment  and  a  ro- 
mantic attitude  for  after  death.  The  police  court 
cases  of  the  bourgeoisie  are  more  often  sordid  than 
sentimental,  squalid  money  quarrels  with  a  sexual  in- 
terest running  through  and  revolvers  intervening; 
sometimes  they  are  tragedies  and  really  tragic,  when 
the  deep  sense  of  life  as  the  greatest  and  most  precious 
thing  is  deeply  stirred  by  a  conflict  of  passions  or  of 
interests. 

Earners  produced  the  grisette,  not  the  bourgeoisie. 
They  are  the  sentiment  and  sentimentality,  the  light- 
ness, the  gaiety,  the  Bohemian,  cafe  concert,  true 
227 


FRANCE 

Montmartre  side  of  France,  her  lawlessness,  gay  brav- 
ery, quick  temper  and  a  little  part,  the  lighter  part, 
of  the  poetry  of  France.  The  bourgeoisie  is  almost 
the  exactly  opposite  side  of  France,  her  strong  sober 
prose.  From  the  little  to  the  great  bourgeois,  the 
bourgeoisie  is  what  France  finally  depends  upon,  and 
the  lasting  canvas  upon  which  her  idealists,  rebels, 
artists  have  embroidered. 

The  great  bourgeois  is  one  of  the  masters  of  his 
time  and  a  modern  King,  but  not  an  American  Copper 
King  or  a  South  African  Diamond  King;  it  takes 
him  a  ifew  generations,  not  a  few  years,  to  reach  King- 
ship. He  always  stands  with  some  bourgeois  past 
behind  him,  and  there  are  almost  no  completely  self- 
made  men  in  France,  a  proof  at  least  of  the  solidity 
of  the  nation.  He  rules,  when  he  gets  to  the  top,  as 
satisfyingly  as  any  copper  or  diamond  king,  and 
perhaps  more  subtly;  he  commands  the  press  dis- 
creetly, pulls  the  strings  of  Parliament  from  behind 
the  scenes,  makes  public  opinion  without  standing  in 
the  public  eye.  His  Kingship  is  real,  and  most  of  the 
great  affairs  of  France  are  ruled  by  a  handful  of  men. 
He  remains,  though  a  great  bourgeois,  a  bourgeois. 
It  is  typical  of  France  that  he  is  not  an  adventurer ; 
adventurers  get  into  his  midst,  but  he  can  never  be 
confused  with  them.  A  hundred  things  distinguish 
him,  the  social  medium  from  which  he  stands  out,  but 
from  which  he  comes,  his  family,  his  womenfolk,  the 
228 


FRANCE 

way  he  looks  at  life.  He  does  not  become  an  aristo- 
crat; he  is  too  honest  for  some  tricks  some  dukes  of 
to-day  play,  but  he  also  has  not  the  manner  with  which 
they  can  be  carried  through  and  off.  A  wealthy  and 
powerful  semi-bourgeois  but  a  parvenu,  not  a  genuine 
bourgeois,  of  Paris  tried  all  his  life  in  vain  to  get  into 
smart,  un-bourgeois  society,  built  a  gaudy  palace  in 
the  Champs  Elysees  and  nobody  went  there,  financed 
innumerable  causes  and  society  did  not  take  them  up. 
I  met  the  man  once :  he  was  less  common  than  one  or 
two  French  duchesses  picked  up  by  the  dukes  in  Amer- 
ican families  whom  a  good  many  Americans  do  not 
know.  The  ladies  might  have  found  it  more  difficult 
to  marry  into  the  bourgeois'  family  than  to  become 
duchesses.  If  they  had  married  there,  the  husbands 
might  not  have  carried  off  the  mesalliance  as  well  as 
the  dukes  did. 

The  middle  and  the  little  bourgeoisie  are  perhaps 
most  characteristic  of  France.  The  great  bourgeoisie 
is  more  cosmopolitan  and  has  much  in  common  with 
the  masters  of  the  modern  world  all  over  the  world. 
The  former  are  French  to  the  core  and  exclusively 
French.  Families  have  never  for  generations  counted 
a  member  who  did  not  own,  who  was  not  an  honest  citi- 
zen with  a  definite  and  accepted  place  in  society,  who 
came  from  anywhere  outside,  and  who  did  not  think 
in  the  French  way  and  in  the  French  bourgeois  way. 
Such  famiHes  of  the  middle  and  little  bourgeoisie  form 


FRANCE 

the  bulk  of  fixed  French  life.  They  are  rooted  to  the 
tradition,  the  property,  the  business,  the  ideas  which 
are  to  them  what  the  soil  is  to  the  peasantry.  Very 
few  noble  families  whose  names  go  back  to  before  the 
first  French  Revolution  and  beyond  can  prove  the 
same  continuity ;  perhaps  almost  none,  for  emigration 
under  the  Revolution,  the  political  vicissitudes  of  the 
Empire,  the  Restoration,  the  Second  Empire,  and  cos- 
mopolitan marriages  all  over  the  world  afterward  are 
conditions  which  affected  them  but  left  at  least  the 
bulk  of  the  bourgeoisie  untouched. 

A  wonderful  Journal  (Tun  bourgeois  pendant  la 
Revolution  shows  that  the  historic  or  legendary  reply 
to  the  question,  "What  did  you  do  under  the  Terror?" 
"I  lived"  is  not  so  witty  after  all.  The  mass  of  the 
bourgeoisie  went  on  living  under  the  Terror  quite 
quietly  and  safely,  as  it  has  lived  ever  since.  Thus  it 
has  been  the  middle  bourgeoisie  that  has  carried  on  a 
torch  of  French  vitality ;  not  a  flaming  torch,  throw- 
ing sparks,  but  burning  with  a  steady  glow.  The 
French  bourgeoisie  passed  through  revolutions  which 
made  a  new  world  for  the  conservative  French  peas- 
antry of  to-day.  Almost  the  same  bourgeoisie  has 
lasted  and  has  remained  homogeneous.  It  has  always 
been  and  is  easier  for  a  family  to  pass  up  and  down 
the  scale  of  the  bourgeoisie  than  to  get  into  it  or  out 
of  it.  The  mere  earners,  tossed  about,  inflamed, 
crushed  by  social  upheavals,  seldom  get  into  the  bour- 
230 


FRANCE 

geoisie.  The  artisan  with  the  bourgeois  instinct  easily 
climbs — it  is  only  a  matter  of  prospering  in  the  world 
— into  the  little  and  thence  into  the  middle  bour- 
geoisie ;  he  really  is  a  bourgeois  already. 


A  middle  bourgeoisie  family:  what  a  strong  small 
state  it  is !  A  state  in  itself,  and  supported  by  com- 
pacts of  alliance  on  every  side.  I  described  once  a 
young  French  mother  who  took  her  child  of  seven  to  see 
an  older  woman  of  a  greater  bourgeoisie.  '"You  are 
indeed  right,"  said  the  older  and  greater  bourgeoisie, 
"to  think  early  of  cultivating  influence  for  your  chil- 
dren." Every  one  who  knows  the  French  bourgeoisie 
will  understand  that  no  irony  was  meant.  tsSe  ereer 
des  relations":  the  literal  version  would  be  to  create  a 
connection — as  in  commercial  traveling.  Ententes 
cordiales  and  alliances  defensive  and  offensive  are 
woven  round  the  family,  sustaining  it.  The  second 
cousin  is  keeper  of  mortgages  at  Montelimar;  the 
uncle's  son-in-law  is  sub-prefect  at  Arras ;  the  son  of 
the  father's  college  chum  is  councilor  at  the  court  of 
accounts  in  Paris — it  all  makes  a  web  of  which  the 
family  at  Poitiers  is  the  center. 

And  each  family,  ifrom  St.  Quentin  to  Toulouse  and 
from  Rennes  to  Gap,  is  the  center  of  another  such 
web.  The  young  Government  engineer  of  roads  and 
231 


FRANCE 

bridges,  deputy  procurator  of  the  Republic,  professor 
of  rhetoric,  sent  away  into  the  provinces,  would  de- 
spair if  sent  to  a  place  whither  his  own  family  web 
had  not  spread,  and  rightly,  for  arriving  without 
even  a  cousin's  cousin  or  a  friend  of  a  friend  of  his 
father  in  the  place  he  might  as  well  arrive  at  the 
North  Pole.  But  it  could  not  happen,  unless  he  had 
no  family  at  all,  and  in  that  case  he  would  probably 
never  have  got  into  the  university,  the  Law  or  the 
Roads  and  Bridges.  Jews  do  not  stick  together  more 
than  the  French  bourgeoisie.  It  is  a  great  mutual  aid 
society,  and  to  some  extent  a  society  for  fighting  all 
outsiders,  for  keeping  out  the  adventurer,  ,or  simply 
the  newcomer  without  credentials,  for  insuring  that 
in  case  of  competition  between  a  competent  man  it 
does  not  know  and  an  incompetent  man  whose  cousin 
it  has  heard  of,  a  job  going  shall  go  to  the  latter. 
The  cause  of  the  bourgeoisie  comes  first ;  the  country 
can  afford  to  put  up  with  two  or  three  or  a  dozen  ill- 
filled  posts,  never  with  a  rift  in  the  solidarity  of  the 
bourgeoisie. 

In  this  network  of  alliances  the  family  is  the  indi- 
vidual state,  with  a  state's  will  to  live,  almost  with  a 
mere  state  morality  and  philosophy,  though  softened 
by  human  intercourse  and  civilization.  Polished  and 
cultured,  it  is  still  in  its  view  of  other  families  not 
far  from  the  attitude  of  one  nation  to  another.  It 
has  an  almost  fierce  conviction  that  it  must  live  and 
232 


FRANCE 

that  all  the  rest  comes  after ;  that  it  must  first  of  all 
live  as  a  unit,  one  tribe  among,  often  against,  other 
tribes.  The  solidarity  of  this  family  is  proof  against 
almost  any  other  instinct.  There  is  a  simple  stock 
example:  if,  over  some  trivial  tilings,  obviously  a 
man's  mother  were  in  the  wrong  and  a  stranger  in  the 
right,  what  would  the  man  do?  Take  his  mother's 
part,  of  course,  says  the  Frenchman.  If  the  thing 
mattered,  all  men  would  take  their  mother's  part, 
right  or  wrong.  But  if  an  Englishman's  mother  took 
the  wrong  umbrella,  he  would  first  look  at  the  um- 
brella ;  the  Frenchman  would  begin  by  words  with  the 
other  lady.  Fair  play  can  not  stand  up  to  the  solidar- 
ity of  the  family. 

The  French  mother  of  the  ancient,  primeval  bour- 
geoisie is  no  ordinary  mother,  but  a  lioness  with  her 
whelps.  No  mother  in  the  world  is  more  devoted. 
She  would  be  a  scandal  if  she  were  not  completely 
devoted.  It  might  sometimes  be  better  for  the  chil- 
dren if  she  were  less  devoted.  She  does  not  lead  her 
own  life  and  is  not  supposed  to.  The  true  French 
father  does  not  lead  his  own  life  either,  and  may  not. 
There  are  no  individual  lives,  there  is  only  the  life  of 
the  family.  The  family  may  have  sprung  from  the 
merest  marriage  of  convenience,  but  it  is  the  same  holy 
family  since  it  has  come  into  the  world.  The  French- 
man's wife  may  be  of  small  concern  to  him ;  the  mother 
of  his  children  he  holds  sacred.  The  French  wife  and 
233 


FRANCE 

mother  is  always  a  mother  first  and  would  cheerfully 
sacrifice  her  husband  for  her  children's  sake,  and  her- 
self also,  of  course.  She  and  he  live  henceforth  only 
in  their  offspring. 

It  is  a  narrow  life,  and  not  always  the  best  for 
the  children  themselves,  but  it  is  a  life  that  has  no- 
bleness in  it.  When  children  grow  up  and  parents 
grow  old,  the  latter  may  find  with  sinking  hearts  that 
they  offered  themselves  up  too  wholly,  and  that  they 
might  have  helped  their  children  better  by  living  their 
own  lives  more.  They  sacrificed  personal  aims,  ideas, 
interests,  slew  their  own  personalities,  and  now  old, 
have  nothing  to  offer  grown-up  sons  and  daughters 
but  reminders  of  past  devotion,  which  henceforth  will 
not  help  these  at  all.  There  can  be,  in  quiet  lives, 
no  greater  tragedy  of  old  age.  The  man  who  lived 
his  own  life,  who  brushed  his  children  aside  if  they 
were  hampering  him,  may  be  found,  when  they  are 
men  and  women  and  he  is  old,  of  more  use  as  guide 
and  example  to  them  than  the  parent  who  was  only  a 
parent. 

The  vice  of  the  French  bourgeoisie  certainly  is  the 
narrowing  of  life.  Yet  there  is  some  dumb  uncon- 
scious poetry  of  deed  in  this  narrow  service  at  the 
shrine  of  life.  Parents  merged  into  their  children; 
every  outside  idea  jettisoned;  every  penny  saved  for 
them;  the  daughter's  dowry  scraped  together  sou  by 
sou;  every  scrap  of  influence  and  patronage  hoarded 
234 


FRANCE 

up  for  the  sons ;  the  girl  watched  over  hour  by  hour 
by  the  mother,  whose  relation  to  her  daughter  in  the 
French  family  is  the  fastest  human  intimacy  known ; 
the  mother  watching  over  the  boy  as  closely,  counsel- 
ing him  for  the  world  and  learning  the  world  she  does 
not  know  to  counsel  him,  looking  it  frankly  in  the 
face  for  his  sake,  taking,  without  a  thought  of  false 
shame,  a  young  man's  point  of  view  of  the  world 
(which  she  had  never  dreamed  of  before)  and  if  needs 
be  consoling,  protecting,  even  advising  him  in  his 
amours — there  is  poetry  lived  in  ihis  will  to  live. 
There  may  be  little  poetry  thought.  The  family  of 
the  bourgeoisie  has  no  time  for  thinking  it,  and  is 
too  much  bent  on  solely  living.  Children  prolong  the 
parents  and  these  seek  a  kind  of  immortality  in  them, 
but  it  is  a  material  immortality,  just  a  lasting  of  this 
day's  life.  The  perfect  mother,  sometimes  sublime, 
demeaning  herself  for  her  son's  sake  to  a  world  she 
learns  only  to  help  him — she  is  not  going  to  be  a 
hypocrite  for  her  own  sake  when  it  is  only  her  boy 
that  matters — has  not  the  slightest  idea  that  there 
is  any  poetry  in  herself.  Parents  saving,  cheese-par- 
ing, sometimes  tricking,  always  on  the  make,  for  their 
children's  future,  have  not  the  slightest  idea  that  there 
is  any  poetry  in  themselves.  The  poetry  is  visible 
indeed  only  to  the  outside  observer,  perhaps  it  exists 
only  for  him.  Within  the  French  bourgeois  family 
there  is  exceedingly  little  room  for  fancy.  The  very 
235 


FRANCE 

notion  of  it  shocks.  The  family  is  Ihe  will  to  live  at 
its  plainest. 

Yet  not  life  without  ornaments.  The  French  bour- 
geoisie has  a  better  taste  in  them  than  has  any  other 
similar  class.  It  is  familiar  with  them  and  has  a 
natural  and  easy  attitude  toward  them.  It  is  not 
frightened  by  art  and  literature.  It  is  used  to  the 
artist's  standpoint  and  the  literary  way  of  looking 
at  things.  So  many  artists  and  men  of  letters  have 
sprung  from  it. 

Even  the  little  bourgeoisie  understands  that  art  mat- 
ters to  a  certain  extent.  The  shopkeeper  goes  to  an 
exhibit  of  pictures  without  perfect  innocence  and  with 
the  notion  that  the  way  the  picture  is  painted  must  be 
looked  at  as  well  as  the  story  it  tells ;  the  bagman  en- 
joys the  way  in  which  the  daily  amorous,  tickling  or 
harrowing  short  story  in  his  one-sou  journal  is  writ- 
ten; the  fat  lady  from  behind  the  cafe  counter  judges 
at  the  play  whether  it  be  well  put  together.  Not  the 
artistic  sense,  but  the  notion  that  there  is  one,  the  idea 
that  it  may  add  to  the  pleasure  of  this  world,  runs 
through  the  bourgeoisie  from  top  to  bottom:  the  idea 
that  by  looking  at  life  with  an  artist's  eyes  one  may 
perhaps  get  more  fun  out  of  it.  That  is  a  serviceable 
definition  of  art.  In  so  far,  the  bourgeoisie  has  a 
conception  of  art.  No  other  equivalent  class  is  as 
familiar,  for  example,  with  the  idea  that  there  is  an 
236 


FRANCE 

art  of  writing  and  that  there  is  pleasure  in  under- 
standing it. 

A  Guy  de  Maupassant,  a,  Gustave  Flaubert,  were 
and  are  appreciated  by  the  French  middle  class.  Of 
what  other  middle  class  could  the  equivalent  be  said? 
The  bourgeoisie  is  highly  civilized,  it  has  refined  the 
pleasures,  cared  for  the  ornaments  of  life.  It  has 
adorned  life,  but  has  not  disguised  it.  The  ornaments 
remain  ornaments;  if  they  hamper  the  structure  cut 
them  away.  Art  in  moderation  gives  pleasure:  if  it 
were  to  interfere  with  life  it  must  be  got  rid  of  at 
once.  Civilized,  refined  and  cultured,  the  bourgeoisie 
never  lets  its  culture  sap  its  realism.  Art,  but  as 
an  ornament;  pleasurable  imagination,  not  fancy; 
pleasant  verse,  not  poetry :  these  would  endanger  real- 
ism. Everything  that  seems  to  keep  the  steady  lamp 
of  life  burning  serves,  but  not  dreams,  mystery,  poetry 
that  make  the  flame  dance  and  flicker. 

Will  the  bourgeoisie  still  in  the  future  keep  the 
flame  of  French  realism  steadily  burning?  What  may 
happen  in  the  future  materially  and  morally  to  the 
bourgeois?  If  the  great  social  upheaval  ever  comes, 
the  bourgeois,  with  the  largest  bulk  of  vested  inter- 
ests divided  among  the  greatest  number  of  individuals 
that  any  country  knows,  will  be  the  strongest  bulwark 
against  it  and  will  put  up  the  best  fight  against  any 
champions  of  social  change.  Of  moral  change  and 
237 


FRANCE 

of  moral  decomposition  in  the  bourgeois  some  French 
observers  see  signs.  I  do  not,  and  I  tliink  they  do 
not  look  in  sufficient  perspective.  Expensive  motor- 
cars, big  rents,  fanciful  fashions,  costume  balls,  cu- 
rious dances:  France  is  going  to  the  dogs,  and  the 
old  bourgeoisie  is  done  for.  At  that  rate  all  modern 
society  is  going  to  the  dogs.  Compared  with  the  same 
society  the  world  over,  the  French  bourgeois  still  owns 
most,  husbands  most,  thinks  most  of  the  future,  serves 
home  gods  most,  sees  life  most  really,  and  most  strives 
to  live  its  life. 


CHAPTER  XV 


THE  French  peasantry  owns,  but  it  is  not  a  bour- 
geoisie; earns,  but  not  wages;  enjoys — does  it  enjoy? 
In  a  village  of  the  He  de  France  I  knew  the  widow 
Evras,  short,  thick,  ruddy,  gray-haired,  pleasant  and 
serious.  She  had  seven  fields  and  three  farms,  and 
two  sons  and  a  daughter  under  age.  At  dusk  in  her 
tiled  kitchen,  an  oil  lamp  lighting  the  smoky  hearth 
and  floor,  the  serious  men  and  women  of  the  village 
met.  One  had  an  ailing  cow,  she  prescribed ;  another 
was  at  law  with  a  neighbor  over  a  field  boundary  stone, 
she  knew  the  legal  precedents:  a  third  had  a  son 
who  wanted  to  go  to  Paris,  she  knew  such  cases  and 
could  advise.  The  serious  village  centered  round  the 
Mere  Evras.  The  village  can  be  reached  from  Paris 
by  motor  in  an  hour  and  a  half.  Madame  Evras 
in  her  last  years  ruled  the  village,  a  wise  woman,  for 
fifty  years  before  a  worker.  Her  daughter  married 
a  serious  villager's  son.  Of  her  sons  one  "went  to 
Paris" — one  heard  no  more — the  other  tilled  his  third 
share  of  her  seven  fields. 

I  never  knew  the  Pere  Evras,  but  I  knew  the  Pere 

239 


FRANCE 

Jaunet,  also  within  an  hour  or  two  of  Paris.  He  went 
to  bed  drunk  on  Saturday  nights,  on  other  nights 
he  gave  shrewd  counsel  over  his  kitchen  fire;  every 
weekday  morning  he  was  up  before  the  sun,  guided 
the  plow,  clipped  his  vines,  tended  his  salads,  dined 
off  cabbage  and  potato  stew,  went  back  to  the  plow, 
fed  his  poultry,  brought  in  his  cows,  and  at  dusk 
supped  off  potatoes  and  leeks  and  gave  counsel. 

Widower  Raton,  not  much  farther  from  Paris,  had 
worked  hard,  but  was  resting  when  I  knew  him.  He 
married;  his  second  wife  was  said  to  have  "a  head 
to  herself."  He  had  fields  and  farms,  and  "a  woolen 
stocking"  which  they  had  filled.  His  wife  died  sud- 
denly. He  said  he  never  found  where  she  had  hid 
his  savings.  He  lived  on  crusts,  still  looking  for  the 
hoard.  He  died,  and  the  woolen  stocking  was  found 
in  his  coat  pocket;  he  had  died  with  the  satisfaction 
of  thinking  that  every  one  thought  his  hoard  lost. 

The  Pere  Baigne-dans-le-Beurre,  by  his  nickname, 
wallowed  in  wealth;  in  spite  of  his  nickname  it  had 
scarcely  softened  him.  He  was  over  jolly  with  any 
bourgeois  out  of  whom  he  could  make  two  sous  a  day ; 
he  was  honestly  jolly  by  himself  at  regular  dates, 
twice  a  month.  The  rest  of  the  time  he  was  hardly 
human.  A  crust  picked  up  in  the  lane  would  go  to 
his  soup ;  his  daughter  he  never  knew  again  after  she 
had  spent  twenty  francs  of  his  for  a  new  dress;  in 
partnership  over  farm  management  he  cheated  his  own 
240 


FRANCE 

son  as  hard  as  he  could,  and  when  his  wife  died  he 
forever  after  went  into  political  opposition  to  the 
Town  Council  because  it  refused  to  pay  for  her  fu- 
neral as  a  pauper.  He  died  with  the  satisfaction  of 
knowing  that  he  had  been  on  the  make  all  his  life 
and  had  always  done  his  neighbor.  His  son  now  car- 
ries on  the  torch. 

Balzac  in  the  Pere  Goriot  and  the  Paysans  is  true, 
and  even  romantically  dirty  Zola  in  La  Terre  is  true. 
Guy  de  Maupassant's  Norman  peasants  are  the  truest 
of  all.  Yet  no  one  French  writer  ever  has  said  all 
that  the  French  peasant  is,  perhaps  because  none 
looked  in  sufficient  perspective.  The  French  peasant 
is  the  backbone  of  the  French  soil,  as  the  French  bour- 
geois is  the  backbone  of  French  cities.  The  French 
peasant  is  often  not  a  lovable  person;  perhaps  the 
genuine  one  never  is  to  any  outsider.  He  is  as  ruth- 
lessly hard  and  dry  as  any  French  story-teller  has 
made  him  out  to  be.  Ease,  open-handedness,  good 
cheer,  he  has  probably  less  than  any  other  country- 
man in  the  world.  In  his  love  for  the  soil  he  is  some- 
times scarcely  human,  and  his  field  may  be  more  to 
him  than  mother,  wife  or  child.  But  he  has  even  so 
a  grandeur^  a  grim  grandeur,  and  a  national  signi- 
ficance for  France  that  even  French  writers  have  not 
described,  seeing  him  from  too  near.  Probably  no 
country  has  such  strong  reserves  rooted  to  the  soil. 
In  agriculture  France  is  a  self-sufficient  country  and 
241 


FRANCE 

she  grows  enough  wheat  to  feed  herself.  She  breeds 
still  peasants  enough  to  stock  her  soil  and  of  the  same 
old  rooted  breed.  The  French  peasant  is  almost  iden- 
tical all  over  France.  The  Basque  French  peasant, 
who  is  still  half  a  foreigner,  as  much  Basque  as 
French,  and  the  Norman  French  peasant,  whom  his- 
torical chance  might  have  made  an  Englishman,  are 
more  akin  now  even  than  the  Norman  is  to  the  Sussex 
yeoman,  his  neighbor  of  just  over  the  way. 


The  French  peasantry  is  a  force  without  which 
no  French  Government  can  think  of  counting.  It  is 
not  one  that  appears  on  the  surface  of  French  poli- 
tics, but  it  is  always  a  directing  force  beneath.  The 
return  effect  of  political  influences  from  the  head  has 
also  been  strong.  Politics  among  the  French  peas- 
antry is  one  of  the  questions  which  is  least  easy  to 
understand  in  France  to-day.  The  first  thing  to 
grasp  is  that  for  various  reasons  and  in  spite  of  va- 
rious obstacles  the  great  majority  of  the  French  peas- 
antry has  completely  accepted  the  Republic.  The 
one  foremost  apparent  reason  why  that  should  have 
been  is,  of  course,  the  first  French  Revolution  and 
the  institution  of  small  freehold  landlordship.  But 
that  argument  is  no  longer  modern;  peasant  owner- 
ship of  the  land  has  passed  into  French  history ;  the 
242 


m~. 


A  Farm  Laborer 


Painted    by    Jules   Adler 


FRANCE 

Republican  Government  has  long  ceased  to  be  thought 
of  as  the  Government  that  after  dire  upheavals  split 
up  the  land  more  or  less  among  peasant  holders.  The 
French  peasant  for  the  last  half  century  has  forgot- 
ten that  history.  Things  to-day  are  utterly  different ; 
the  French  peasant  owner  does  not  think  of  a  possi- 
bility of  his  not  owning  the  land,  his  acceptance  of 
the  Republic  rests  upon  other  reasons. 

After  twenty  years  or  less  of  the  Third  Repub- 
lic the  French  peasant  took  to  the  Republic  finally. 
It  was  accepted  on  the  countryside  as  the  stable,  nat- 
ural and  logical  regime  of  France.  That  more  than 
anything  else  made  the  Third  Republic  secure.  The 
peasantry  had  old  leanings  to  the  magnate  made  by 
the  two  Empires,  older  leanings  to  the  squire  made 
by  the  Monarchy.  The  Republic  of  to-day,  after 
many  previous  Republics  and  upheavals,  turned  out 
stronger  and  more  durable  and  more  serious  for  the 
soil  itself  than  previous  Governments  for  two  cen- 
turies. The  French  peasant  was  won,  and  it  is  not 
easy  to  win  over  the  knotty,  canny  French  peasant. 
He  agreed  to  the  Republic,  and  to  keep  the  Republic 
became  his  conservatism,  which  to-day  is  probably  the 
truest  expression  of  French  conservatism.  The  Re- 
public might  have  the  backing  of  all  the  wage-earn- 
ing industrial  classes  and  yet  be  shaky.  It  has  al- 
most all  that  support;  as  long  as  it  has  also  that 
of  the  majority  of  the  peasantry  and  thus  rests  di- 


FRANCE 

rectly  upon  the  greater  part  of  French  soil  it  will 
with  difficulty  be  shaken.  Some  provinces  and  dis- 
tricts, those  where  the  Church  of  Rome  has  retained 
strong  influence,  have  remained  Royalist,  or  might, 
though  a  Bonaparte  would  stand  a  better  popular 
chance  with  a  portion  of  the  town  middle  classes,  yet 
welcome  one — Brittany,  Vendee,  parts  of  Normandy. 
Over  almost  all  the  remainder  of  French  soil  the  con- 
servative French  peasant  is  a  Conservative  Republi- 
can. He  looks  to  no  Monarchical  or  Autocratic  res- 
toration to  improve  his  lot ;  he  is  shrewd  and  can  see 
well  that  he  would  gain  nothing  by  any  change  that 
way,  as  he  foresees  no  gain  by  any  in  the  opposite 
direction,  French  things  can  never  be  understood  un- 
til it  is  understood  that  in  this  sense  the  Republican 
Government  of  France  is  the  government  of  social 
preservation,  not  of  change,  and  that  the  French  soil 
looks  upon  it  thus. 

The  peasantry,  which  much  more  efficiently  helps 
to  support  the  Third  Drench  Republic  than  it  ever 
helped  to  institute  it,  has  been  in  return  influenced 
by  Repubh'can  administration  and  policy  in  various 
and  curious  ways.  The  party  politics  of  the  French 
peasant  are  not  always  easy  to  understand  or  capable 
of  explanation.  A  complete  political  map  of  the 
French  soil  would  be  a  hard  and  in  large  part — for 
urban  if  not  for  rural  districts — an  ephemeral  work. 
Some  comparatively  lasting  outlines  may  be  drawn 
244 


FRANCE 

for  the  rural  districts.  The  He  de  France,  Cham- 
pagne, the  southeast  and  in  a  lesser  degree  the  south- 
west of  France  are  in  partisan  terminology  more  rad- 
ically Republican  than  the  rest  of  the  country :  that 
is,  broadly,  they  are  more  divorced  from  the  Church. 
The  influence  of  Paris  upon  the  He  de  France  ex- 
plain's  the  latter's  politics.  In  other  cases,  in  that  of 
Provence,  for  instance,  the  explanation  is  hard  to  seek. 
Almost  every  Radical  in  Parisian  politics  comes  from 
the  south.  Why?  The  Marseillais  have  a  century-old 
reputation.  But  even  the  peasant  of  the  south  re- 
turns a  Radical  Member  of  Parliament.  To  the  wan- 
derer in  Provence  no  country  seems  less  planned  by 
Nature  or  shaped  by  man  for  radical  change  than 
those  vineyards,  sunny  fields,  olive  groves  and  towns 
lightly  slumbering  upon  a  Roman,  Greek  and  Phoeni- 
cian past.  Is  there,  however,  any  more  real  "Radical- 
ism" or  "Socialist  Radicalism,"  if  the  party  names 
be  taken  literally,  in  the  colder,  harder,  deeper  peasant 
of  gray  He  de  France? 

The  Republic  has  come  to  be  the  French  peasant's 
idea  of  a  preserving  organism  through  a  very  few 
simple  measures.  Really  two  have  made  his  idea  of 
the  Republic  what  it  is:  the  nursing  of  agriculture 
and  the  struggle  against  the  Church  of  Rome.  De- 
termined protection  of  French  agriculture  has  been 
built  up  round  the  peasant,  and  he  would  be  ungrate- 
ful indeed  if  he  were  not  a  Republican.  Various  par- 
245 


FRANCE 

ties,  in  particular  a  moderate  Republican  party  and 
a  Socialist  party,  put  at  various  times  free  trade  in 
their  program;  none  ever  attempted  to  put  it  into 
practise.  The  wall  of  tariffs  always  continued  to 
shield  the  peasant.  Other  classes  of  the  community 
paid  for  it,  the  whole  community  in  the  long  run 
might  pay  for  it:  that  is  a  controversial  point.  The 
peasant  proprietor  anyhow  continued  to  benefit,  and 
free  trader  and  protectionist  alike  must  agree  that  the 
position  of  the  modern  French  peasant  proprietor  is 
the  strongest  argument  for  protectionism. 


Ill 


The  chief  political  activity  of  the  parties  that  gov- 
erned the  Third  Republic  up  to  disestablishment  was, 
save  for  two  or  three  intervals  of  "reaction,"  their 
struggle  against  the  Church  of  Rome.  "Radicalism" 
and  "Socialist  Radicalism"  were  born  of  that  strug- 
gle, lived  for  it  and  by  it,  and  may  die  for  want  of 
a  stimulus,  if  the  struggle  ever  cease.  Where  those 
two  parties  ruled  in  rural  districts,  "Anti-Clericalism" 
undoubtedly  ruled  also.  Where  moderate  Republicans 
ruled,  it  ruled  less  completely,  but  it  ruled;  at  least 
no  politician  but  one  prepared  to  be  called  an  Anti- 
Republican  could  afford  to  pass  in  the  countryside 
for  a  "Clerical."  "Anti-Clericalism,"  political  war 
against  the  political  Church,  certainly  was,  and  doubt- 
246 


FRANCE 

less  will  still  be,  a  matter  of  life  and  deatK  for  tHe 
Republic.  "Anti-Clericalism,"  with  all  its  exaggera- 
tion, was  necessary.  The  subject  is  dealt  with  else- 
where. What  matters  here  is  that  the  Soil  felt  this ; 
the  French  peasant  owner  of  the  soil  was  "Anti-Cler- 
ical" because  he  was  Republican,  usually  for  no  other 
reason.  He  was  not  "Anti-Clerical"  because  he  was 
irreligious,  though  he  might  be  irreligious ;  he  was 
"Anti-Clerical"  because  the  Church  meant  "Clerical- 
ism." "Clericalism"  was  an  active  policy,  and  that 
policy  meant  the  upset  of  the  Republican-  Gov- 
ernment, and  because  finally  "Clericalism"  made  for 
upheaval  and  the  Republic  stood  for  conservatism. 
Was  it  the  fault  or  the  misfortune  of  the  Church  that 
the  Church  policy  came  to  mean  radical  change  from 
the  established  Republican  system,  and  the  policy 
against  the  Church  the  preservation  of  that  system? 
That  also  is  discussed  elsewhere.  The  peasant  did 
not  discuss  the  rights,  he  only  saw  the  facts  as  far 
as  he  could  see  them.  He  saw  only  that  the;  Cure 
was  generally  taught  to  work  against  the  Republican 
Government  and  that  the  latter  stood  for  present 
power,  stability  and  prospects,  and  he  went  to  the 
latter.  He  was  seldom  irreligious.  It  would  be  a 
great  mistake  to  imagine  that  Anti-Clericalism  in  the 
French  village  means  war  on  religion.  In  some  vil- 
lages, in  the  lie  de  France,  in  Champagne,  but  in 
yerjr  few,  the  peasant  does  not  get  married  in  church 
247 


FRANCE 

and  does  not  have  his  children  baptized.  Compared 
with  the  rest  of  the  country  these  are  extraordinary 
exceptions.  There  is  barely  one  in  a  hundred  villages 
of  Anti-Clerical  France  in  which  marriage  before  the 
registrar — the  mayor — is  called  a  marriage  at  all,  or 
in  which  not  to  christen  a  baby,  or  to  let  the  dying 
die  without  absolution,  will  not  be  thought  a  family 
crime.  The  same  villages  vote  regularly  for  Radical 
Members  of  Parliament.  The  two  things  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  each  other:  the  latter  is  politics,  the 
former  is,  if  not  faith,  at  least  tradition,  of  which 
collective  faith  is  a  great  deal  made  up. 

The  Cure  and  the  Chateau:  conservative  rural 
France  has  sometimes  been  thus  summed  up,  and  rural 
Republican  France  has  been  summed  up  as  against 
Cure  and  Chateau.  There  are  a  number  of  errors 
in  both  judgments.  The  Anti-Clerical  peasant  is  no 
foe  to  the  cure  as  spiritual  minister,  for  the  irreli- 
gious peasant  is  rare.  The  peasant  has  no  knowledge 
of  the  chateau  except  in  a  few  regions  where  a  feudal 
tradition  still  reigns.  Where  the  cure  is  the  creature 
of  the  chateau,  he  is  either  the  pastor  of  his  flock  or 
the  bugbear  of  the  village.  Where  the  cure  is  but 
the  village  priest  he  is  "Not*  cure"  to  Anti-Clerical 
almost  as  much  as  to  churchgoing  villagers.  I  knew 
a  townlet  in  the  He  de  France  where  the  mothers  said 
they  had  their  reasons  for  forbidding  their  girls  to 
go  alone  to  see  M.  le  Cure.  But  they  never  thought 
248 


FRANCE 

of  not  sending  them  to  him  for  the  catechism  class, 
or  of  staying  away  from  church  when  he  said  mass 
on  Sundays  and  preached.  It  is  only  on  the  rare 
manor  lands  left  where  the  hereditary  squire  still  rules 
whose  forefathers  ruled  before  him  that  squire  and 
priest  are  identified.  Even  there,  fighting  the  chateau 
and  the  cure  can  scarcely  be  called  an  important  item 
in  the  aggressive  Republican  program.  The  few 
chateaux  that  have  retained  their  ancient  power  wield 
it  absolutely,  and  it  can  no  more  be  beaten  down  than 
a  great  English  landlord's  gamekeeper  can  be  captured 
by  English  Radicalism,  but  it  is  exercised  in  very 
small  areas  and  has  not  the  slightest  influence  out- 
side. There  are  but  a  sprinkling  of  real  squires  left 
in  France.  As  for  the  chateau's  cure,  he  has  no  power 
of  his  own  at  all,  and  tKe  most  vigorous  Anti-Clerical- 
ism wastes  no  powder  and  shot  on  him  that  can  be 
better  used  against  the  organized  political  ChurcK. 
Where  there  is  no  chateau  overshadowing  the  village, 
and  that  is  the  most  characteristic  and  typical  French 
village,  the  priest  might  perhaps  have  been  used  pre- 
cisely as  an  instrument  by  the  Republic,  if  the  his- 
tory both  of  the  Republic  and  of  the  Church  had  been 
different.  The  struggle  between  CKurch  and  State  in 
the  countryside  has  been  and  still  is  strongest  in  the 
village  school.  It  will  remain  a  vital  factor  in  French 
village  life :  State  teacher  and  priest  fighting  over  the 
village  urchin,  the  latter  denouncing  the  former's 
249 


FRANCE 

"godless"  school-books,  the  former  reporting  on  the 
latter's  school-books  "traducing  the  Republic  and  gar- 
bling the  history  of  France,"  State  school  and  Church 
school  in  furious  competition  and  the  latter  generally 
winning  in  the  long  run.  The  Anti-Clerical  peasant 
will  quite  well  send  his  two  or  three  children  to  the 
Church  school — and  go  on  voting  for  the  Anti-Clerical 
Socialist  Radical  Member  of  Parliament. 


IV 


A  fair  land,  rich,  bright  to  the  eye,  but  mellow- 
colored  in  soft  tones,  grand  and  wild  here  and  there, 
but  for  the  most  part  subdued,  graceful,  well  trimmed 
and  well  bred  and  the  best  cultivated  in  Europe;  a 
people  of  peasants  who  own  the  fields  they  till;  scat- 
tered among  them,  remnants  of  feudal  nobles  and  a 
small  people  of  tiny  squires  whom  upheavals  spared, 
hobereaux,  more  peasants  themselves  than  squires,  yet 
not  quite  peasants ;  and  planted  upon  the  lot  the  new- 
comers, the  outsiders,  from  the  retired  town  grocer 
in  liis  hideous  villa,  the  most  hideous  of  all  villas  in 
all  European  villadom,  to  the  financial  king  who 
bought  a  chateau  built  between  the  ages  of  Francis 
I  and  Louis  XIV  and  its  furniture  and  tapestries  and 
ancestors  for  what  was  to  nim  a  song;  on  the  land, 
the  splendor  of  scores  of  priceless  cathedrals  and  thou- 
sands of  exquisite  gray  stone  churches,  most  of  which 
250 


FRANCE 

the  un-Christian  State  keeps  in  repair,  and  the  pol- 
ished beauty  of  hundreds  of  palaces,  castles  and  man- 
ors, most  of  them  national  monuments  in  the  State's 
sole  care — such  is  rural  France.  How  will  this  French 
soil  change? 

Nationalization  of  the  land  is  an  article  of  most 
kinds  of  Socialistic  faith.  It  may  be  put  into  prac- 
tise somewhere,  not  in  France,  unless  France  under- 
goes a  greater  change  than  that  of  the  first  French 
Revolution.  The  French  Parliamentary  Unified  So- 
cialist party  proposing  nationalization  of  the  land 
to  the  French  peasant  owner  would  raise  a  Homeric 
laugh,  or  perhaps  a  more  bitter  kind  of  guffaw, 
throughout  the  countryside.  The  French  peasant  will 
not  share  a  field  or  a  cow  with  his  own  brother  by 
blood;  any  communism,  any  common  ownership  of 
fields  and  kine  by  him  and  his  brother  villagers  he 
would  call  a  grim  joke.  Sympathy  which  every  So- 
cial thinker  must  feel  with  theories  for  the  nationali- 
zation by  means  of  production  always  knocks  up 
against  the  doubt  which,  if  he  has  thought  sufficiently, 
he  must  also  always  entertain,  whether  man  be  not 
a  born  owner  who  must  have  some  things  of  his  very 
own.  If  French  agriculture  is  the  best  argument 
against  Free  Trade,  the  French  peasant  is  the  best 
evidence  that,  as  the  child  will  have  a  toy  of  his  very 
own,  man  will  not  be  taught  not  to  desire  possession. 
The  last  man  in  the  world  to  give  up  his  own  little 
251 


FRANCE 

corner  of  the  earth  to  a  community  of  which  he  would 
be  one  will  be  the  French  peasant.  William  Morris' 
News  from  Nowhere  is  an  often  great  and  beautiful 
dream,  the  only  beautiful  one  of  its  kind  transcribed. 
Knowledge  of  the  French  peasantry  shatters  it,  and 
I  have  often  wondered  what  Morris  would  have  an- 
swered, if  (in  a  moment  when  he  chose  to  argue  the 
subject)  one  had  met  him  merely  with — the  French 
peasant. 

No  shadow  of  belief  in  any  form  of  Socialism,  prob- 
ably no  comprehension  of  what  any  Socialism  means, 
has  entered  the  French  peasant's  head.  There  was 
from  the  first  no  chance  in  modern  times  that  any 
should.  Only  wage-earning  farmhands  and  laborers, 
discontented,  and  sufficiently  discontented,  numerous 
and  energetic  to  organize,  could  spread  any  sort  of 
Socialism  in  the  French  countryside.  The  handful  of 
wage-earners  in  the  French  rural  population,  and  no 
more  discontented,  perhaps  rather  less,  than  their  fel- 
lows in  other  countries,  could  hardly,  if  they  got  to- 
gether, disturb  half  a  dozen  villages.  I  know,  and 
every  student  of  France  knows,  hundreds  and  thou- 
sands of  villages  in  the  most  prosperous  parts  of 
the  French  countryside,  which  do  not  contain  one 
single  mere  wage-earning  field  worker  owning  noth- 
ing. In  districts  where  solely  hired  labor  without 
property  exists  on  the  land,  it  is  generally  that 
either  of  imported  Belgians  or  Italians  or  of  no- 
252 


FRANCE 

madic  FrencH  waifs  and  strays  or  of  French  peasants 
who  through  ill  luck  or  bad  management  have  lost 
what  they  had,  but  who  at  one  time  did  have  some- 
thing. If  Socialist  or  Trade  Union  organization  be 
almost  unknown  in  the  rural  population  of  England, 
where  the  land  belongs  to  the  few  and  where  the  peas- 
ant owning  the  land  he  tills  is  an  extraordinary  ex- 
ception, it  is  still  more  unlikely  in  France  where  the 
peasant  who  does  not  own  the  land  he  tills  is  the  ex- 
ception. In  observations  spreading  over  many  years, 
I  have  kept  note  of  one  and  only  one  strike  of  French 
agricultural  laborers,  toward  1905,  and  that  after  a 
few  days  was  heard  of  no  more.  No  trade  unions  or 
even  organizations  of  any  kind  are  recorded  to  exist 
among  mere  wage-earning  agricultural  laborers  in 
France.  The  only  important  ^agricultural  syndi- 
cates" are  precisely  groups  of  peasant  landowners, 
very  practical,  useful,  enterprising  cooperative  bod- 
ies, working  together  for  the  better  development  of 
their  properties  and  the  better  distribution  of  their 
produce ;  no  syndicates  could  be  more  averse  from  what 
has  been  called  "syndicalism." 

In  modern  France  no  "labor  movement"  has  been 
known  among  the  peasantry.  The  "Wine  War"  of 
1907  in  the  south  seemed  like  to  make  a  revolution. 
It  would  have  been  a  revolution  of  those  who  own  the 
earth  because  they  could  not  make  enough  out  of  the 
earth,  of  winegrowers  because  in  that  year  they  could 
258 


FRANCE 

not  sell  their  wine.  That  wonderful  march,  when  a 
hundred  thousand  men  (it  was  a  southern  estimate 
of  numbers,  but  it  was  a  wonderful  march  all  the  same) 
started  from  the  vineyards  north  of  the  Pyrenees  to 
tramp  their  wrongs  across  France  if  needs  were,  would 
have  been  an  invasion  of  little  landlords,  each  one 
of  whom  had  owned  his  vines  from  father  to  son, 
and  though  all  stood  and  tramped  together,  no  prophet 
meeting  them  to  speak  of  communism  and  nationaliza- 
tion of  vineyards  would  have  been  welcome.  The 
Parliamentary  Unified  Socialist  party  from  the  safe 
distance  of  Paris  did  speak,  but  no  member  ventured 
down  to  the  midst  of  the  furious  little  landlords  who 
could  not  sell  their  wine  that  year.  M.  Clemenceau 
judged  the  Wine  War  well;  it  was  no  revolution 
springing  from  any  of  the  deep  causes  that  may 
change  society.* 

The  French  peasant,  owning  the  French  soil,  has 
no  conflict  with  employers,  almost  none  with  the  dying 
squires,  with  the  hobereau,  the  small  country  gentle- 
man, all  but  a  peasant  like  himself.  He  is  the  enemy 
only  of  the  bourgeois  of  the  towns,  the  intruder  in 
the  countryside,  whom  he  dislikes  much  more  with 
a  natural  dislike  of  the  country  for  the  town  than 

*  He  enticed  the  leader,  MarcelHn  Albert,  the  hero  of  a 
day,  to  his  Prime  Minister's  study,  kept  him  ten  minutes, 
gave  him  a  hundred  francs,  and  the  revolt  was  broken, 
being  no  stronger  than  a  small  trick  of  cynical  statesman- 
ship. Albert,  when  he  got  back,  was  nearly  stoned  for  tak- 
ing the  bribe. 

254 


FRANCE 

for  any  class  jealousy,  whom  he  looks  down  upon  more 
than  dislikes,  and  out  of  whom  he  makes  as  much  as 
he  can.  Conflicts  between  peasant  owners  and  peas- 
ant wage-earners  are  for  the  present  negligible  and 
will  continue  so,  unless  the  peasant  owning  class  dwin- 
dles and  the  soil  is  gathered  up  into  fewer  hands, 
of  which  there  is  no  sign.  The  future,  the  distant 
future,  of  the  French  country  holds  perhaps  a  differ- 
ent and  greater  conflict.  There  are  no  signs  of  it  yet, 
no  social  signs  at  least.  But  a  conflict  of  the  kind 
would  be  ultimately  logical. 

The  French  peasant  owns  and  clings  to  ownership, 
one  may  say  desperately.  He  not  only  must  hold 
aloof  from  all  schemes  for  a  social  change  toward 
common  ownership  of  land,  but  may  eventually  be 
driven  by  events  to  take  his  stand  strongly  against 
schemes  for  the  common  ownership  of  any  or  every- 
thing. It  is  not  at  all  unthinkable  that  industrial 
wage-earning  France  may  some  day  unite  to  claim 
some  such  social  change  and  unite  strongly  enough  to 
put  the  claim  strongly ;  the  day  is  far  from  come,  but 
it  may  come.  If  it  does,  on  which  "side  of  the  barri- 
cade"— in  political  French  imagery  bred  by  many 
revolutions  and  lastly  the  Commune  of  1871 — will 
the  French  peasantry  stand?  Certainly  not  on  the 
side  of  common  ownership  and  certainly  on  that  of 
distinct  and  jealous  "mine  and  thine."  If  the  great 
social  war  ever  comes  in  France,  we  shall  expect  to 
255 


FRANCE 

find  capital  and  labor  arrayed  against  each  other, 
and — as  wherever  the  war  breaks  out — those  who 
own  or  have  earned  and  who  pay,  and  those  who  earn 
and  are  paid,  against  one  another;  a  simpler  war, 
perhaps,  than  political  economists  may  think.  But 
in  France  at  least,  and  perhaps  in  France  alone  in 
the  world,  there  will  be  this  subtle  complication:  the 
peasantry  will  be  all  on  the  side  of  ownership,  the 
soil  will  be  on  the  side  of  capital.  If  the  war  comes 
and  in  this  country,  one  may  imagine  a  division  of 
social  forces  unknown  in  history  before:  on  one  side, 
the  huge  army  of  those  who  labor  and  make  and  have 
lacked  either  the  chance  or  the  strength  to  own  what 
they  labored  for  and  what  they  made,  and,  on  the 
other,  the  owners,  the  employers,  the  financiers,  the 
hereditary  landlords,  and  with  them  the  huge  army 
of  peasants  to  whom  the  soil  belongs.  The  peasant 
has  incomparably  less  knowledge  of  this  world  of  to- 
day than  the  factory  worker,  and  in  the  latter's  world 
is  as  obtuse  as  the  latter  is  sharp;  nor  in  his  own 
world  would  he  turn  the  tables  easily.  But  he  has 
one  incomparable  mastery  over  the  worker  of  the 
towns,  he  is  a  master,  the  master  of  his  own  field: 
for  that  he  despises  the  worker  whose  ready  cash  is 
twice  his.  For  that  he  will  take  sides  not  for,  but 
against,  the  worker  of  the  towns,  and  for  that  he 
will  make  the  great  social  war,  when  it  comes,  differ- 
ent in  France  from  what  it  will  be  everywhere  else. 
256 


FRANCE 

One  wonders  precisely  whether  he  may  not  prevent  it 
from  coming  in  France  at  all.  "C'est  un  ires  grand 
Jionneur  de  po$scder  un  cliamp,"  wrote  Charles  de 
Pomairols,  poet  and  Tiobereau. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


THE   CITIES 


THERE  are  many  Parises,  and  there  are  many  great 
cities  in  France  that  are  not  Paris.  Let  me  try  to 
enumerate  the  Parises  there  are:  the  tourists'  Paris 
that  everybody  knows ;  the  American  Champs  Elysees 
Paris  which  has  succeeded  the  Faubourg  St.  Honore 
Paris  of  the  old  days  when  there  was  still  a  British 
colony  in  Paris;  the  westward  Paris  where  the  Pari- 
sians live ;  the  Paris  of  the  boulevards,  still  surviving 
from  the  Vaudeville  to  the  Madeleine;  the  Paris  that 
works  and  sometimes  slaves  (vlelllard  laborieux  it 
was  called  by  Baudelaire),  east  of  thence,  and  north 
and  south,  too;  the  particular  working  Paris  that 
makes  money,  just  east  of  the  Opera  in  the  dense 
corner  where  the  Bourse  and  wholesale  trades  are; 
the  old  and  stately  Paris  where  the  Boulevard  St. 
Germain  was  threescore  years  ago  driven  through  es- 
tates and  has  left  from  time  to  time  a  sleepy,  comely 
mansion  on  either  side  of  it;  the  Paris  of  the  Boul* 
Miche  where  there  once  was  a  Latin  Quarter;  the 
American  Paris  of  Montparnasse ;  the  Parises  of  Belle- 
ville and  Menilmontant  and  the  Buttes  Chaumont  and 
258 


FRANCE 

Montrouge,  which  are  another  world,  here  and  there 
often  squalid  sometimes  charming  little  worlds  of 
their  own. 

It  is  a  great  voyage  of  discovery  through  Paris, 
in  space  and  in  time.  The  distances  are  short,  but 
sometimes  in  fifty  yards  one  can  step  from  one  world 
into  another;  some  worlds  of  Paris  it  takes  ten  or 
twenty  years  or  perhaps  a  lifetime  to  get  into.  A 
day  and  a  night  are  enough  for  knowing  the  face 
Paris  shows  to  outsiders.  Boulevard  cafes,  where  all 
are  welcome  and  the  newcomer  can  sit  down  at  the 
next  table  to  that  of  the  habitue  of  twenty  years  (not 
at  his  table,  though),  can  teach  something  of  Paris 
life  and  Parisian  talk  in  half  an  hour.  The  boule- 
vards, busy  and  loitering,  feverish  and  lazy,  full  of 
mad  traffic  beneath  green  trees,  the  Rue  de  Rivoli, 
tinpot  shops  under  stately  archways,  the  Rue  de  la 
Paix,  diamonds  and  motor-cars,  the  Tuileries,  quaint 
sharp  French  children  playing  or  neat  perky  shop- 
girls lunching  beneath  sedate  and  trimmed  limes  and 
planes  that  have  seen  so  much  history,  the  Place  de  la 
Concorde  and  the  Champs  Elysees,  pattern  of  well 
planned  urban  landscapes,  all  speak  to  the  eye  at 
once.  That  Paris  can  be  understood  in  an  afternoon ; 
she  laid  herself  out  to  be  known  in  an  afternoon,  and 
that  is  one  virtue  of  Paris.  She  always  has  a  wel- 
come, a  spacious,  pleasant,  well-managed  welcome, 
for  the  stranger ;  she  keeps  a  great  deal  of  herself  to 
259 


FRANCE 

herself,  but  there  is  always  a  smile  for  the  stranger — 
a  stately  and  sly  smile — the  Champs  Elysees  and 
Montmartre.  One  night  of  Montmartre  supper-places 
and  dancing-rooms  teaches  all  there  is  to  be  known 
of  them.  Every  one  is  welcome :  the  respectable  elderly 
French  lady  wearing  a  paper  fool's  cap  on  Christmas 
Eve,  the  American  ladies  come  to  look  on  and  see 
life,  the  French  Senator  still  gay,  the  American  hus- 
band trying  to  be  gay,  the  smart  gay  ladies,  the 
girls  who  would  like  to  be  smart,  the  shady  men,  the 
adventurer,  the  bully,  the  tout.  In  twenty-four  hours 
the  tourist  has  learned  his  day  and  night  Paris. 

The  night  Paris  is  one  that  the  rest  of  Paris  has 
only  heard  about.  I  wish  I  could  get  statistics  of 
the  proportionate  number  of  Parisians  who  have  never 
been  to  Montmartre.  Many  an  English,  American  or 
other  tourist  is  infinitely  better  acquainted  with  the 
Rat  Mort,  the  Abbaye,  the  Rabelais,  the  Royal,  the 
Monico,  than  any  Parisian,  and  could  go  thither 
blindfolded  from  the  Gare  du  Nord  or  the  Gare  St. 
Lazare,  whereas  the  Parisian  who  lives  a  quarter  of 
a  mile  or  a  hundred  yards  away  would  feel  and  look 
an  awkward  stranger  in  these  "Parisian"  haunts.  To 
countless  Paris  families  that  live  and  have  lived  for 
generations  at  Passy,  round  the  Pare  Monceau,  even 
in  Montmartre,  nocturnal  Montmartre  is  an  undiscov- 
ered, a  sort  of  mythical  country.  A  gay  young  son 
here  and  there  has  dared  to  explore  it  when  he  had 

MO 


FRANCE 

extra  pocket  money.  The  family  thought  him  a  sad 
dog,  and  lets  him  keep  his  knowledge  to  himself. 
Nothing  is  funnier  than  to  bring  suddenly  into  a  real 
Parisian  family  an  old  Paris-beaten  tourist  who  knows 
his  outside  Paris  by  heart:  the  astonishment  of  the 
old  "Parisian"  tourist,  when  he  finds  all  his  pet  Paris 
landmarks  of  twenty  years  unknown  to  the  family, 
and  the  family  looks  blank  at  his  best  jokes  and  anec- 
dotes about  this  famous  waiter  and  that  picturesque 
cafe;  the  bewilderment  of  the  family  to  find  that  it 
was  expected  to  know  all  this  and  that  this  is  the 
Paris  and  all  the  Paris  the  visitor  of  twenty  years 
knows. 

The  family  does  not  know  very  much  more  about 
the  Champs  Elysees  Paris,  which  is  American  and 
cosmopolitan,  as  in  the  old  days  the  Faubourg  St. 
Honore  Paris,  round  the  British  Embassy,  was  Eng- 
lish and  cosmopolitan.  Not  one  resident  in  ten  in  the 
Champs  Elysees  or  thereabouts  is  Parisian  or  even 
French.  Most  of  the  pseudo-American  hotels,  which 
gave  the  Champs  Elysees  their  new  character  and 
turned  them  from  an  avenue  into  a  gay  tango  place, 
are  or  were  Boche.  At  the  hotel  teas,  afternoon  teas 
and  night  teas,  most  Parisian  families  would  feel 
strangers  in  a  strange  land.  American  families  go 
there  to  learn  French  life. 

Like  all  European  cities,  Paris  moves  westward. 
At  the  end  of  last  century  the  Champs  Elysees  had 
261 


FRANCE 

not  a  shop,  a  restaurant  or  a  hotel.  Under  the  Sec- 
ond Empire,  boulevardiers  lived  and  talked,  and  set- 
tled the  world's  affairs  with  a  Parisianism,  on  the 
boulevards  toward  the  Faubourg  Montmartre.  Before 
the  end  of  the  century  every  boulevardier  had  ceased 
going  as  far  east  as  the  Faubourg  Montmartre,  and 
Tortoni's,  once  the  cafe  heart  of  Paris,  had  become 
a  boot  shop.  To-day  the  boulevards,  several  miles 
long,  begin  only  at  their  end  just  before  the  Opera. 
Nothing  east  of  that  counts  for  the  boulevardier. 
The  boulevardier  himself  indeed  is  dying  out  like  his 
boulevards.  The  name  itself  is  already  extinct  and 
the  Parisian  family  would  be  surprised  to  hear  it  still 
spoken,  but  the  thing  does  still  exist.  There  still  are 
boulevardiers,  though  none  owns  now  to  the  name. 
They  are  theater  people,  noblemen,  journalists,  writ- 
ers, cinema  people,  people  with  nothing  in  particular 
to  do  except  to  know  what  is  going  on.  They  meet 
in  one  particular  cafe  at  five  p.  M.  Some  live  in  suc- 
cessive cafes  with  clockwork  regularity,  in  one  from 
eleven  to  lunch-time,  in  another  from  two  to  four,  in 
a  third  from  five  to  seven.  This  is  the  old  and  scarce 
type  of  Parisian  that  knows  no  family  life  and  whom 
the  Parisian  family  does  not  know. 

The  commoner  species  of  boulevardier  extant  lives 
with  his  family  except  from  five  to  seven,  when  he 
is  at  his  cafe.  There  he  sees  friends,  does  business, 
cultivates  acquaintanceships  over  strange  and  gener- 


FRANCE 

ally  mild  mixed  drinks  in  the  midst  of  a  whirl  of 
waiters  and  glasses  and  babble  that  would  distract 
any  but  a  Parisian.  On  the  corner  of  a  table  a  stock- 
broker will  be  transacting  a  business  deal  of  millions. 
At  the  other  end  of  the  same  table  a  playwright  and 
a  composer  are  planning  an  operetta.  Close  by  a 
Deputy  has  just  come  from  the  last  Chamber  debate 
and  argues  with  a  Minister's  private  secretary.  An 
English  and  an  American  journalist  are  listening  to 
an  old  Turk's  tales,  frequently  interrupted  by  those 
of  an  Armenian  and  a  Greek.  A  decayed  Marquis, 
turned  cinema  agent,  is  surrounded  by  acrobats,  male 
and  female,  all  eager  to  "turn,"  to  whom  he  gives 
audience  regularly  at  his  cafe  table,  and  remains  the 
perfect  Old  World  gentleman  in  the  midst  of  his  cu- 
rious company  and  new  occupations.  Actresses  flit 
in  and  out ;  waiters  dash  hither  and  thither.  A  glass 
is  served  here,  another  upset  there,  a  table  wiped  with 
a  napkin  elsewhere.  And  in  the  midst  of  it  all  stock- 
broker, playwright,  cinema  agent,  journalist,  acrobat, 
each  gets  miraculously  through  with  his  business. 
This  is  boulevardier  Paris,  what  is  left  of  it.  Three, 
at  most  four,  cafes  remain  on  the  boulevards  that  can 
call  themselves  Parisian. 

A  stone's  throw  from  this  Paris  that  works  gaily, 

and  does  get  through  quite  a  surprising  amount  of 

work  in  its  own  way,  one  can  see  another  aspect  of 

Baudelaire's  Paris,  "vieillard  laborieux" :  the  markets, 

263 


FRANCE 

\ 

whither  at  the  hour  when  supper-parties  are  starting 
oysters,  carts  scarlet  with  carrots  and  green  with  cab- 
bages, and  trains  laden  with  fish  and  flesh  bring  food 
to  what  Zola  in  one  of  his  best  gross  pictures  called 
the  Ventre  de  Paris ;  the  Bourse  screaming  up  to  three 
P.  M.  right  out  into  the  street  with  money  asked  for 
and  offered ;  the  Rue  du  Sentier  where  beads  and  feath- 
ers and  buttons  and  sample  fashion  color  cards  and 
a  hundred  articles  of  dress  keep  millions  of  money 
in  circulation  and  feed  thousands  of  men  and  women. 
Nearer  the  hem  of  Paris,  Belleville,  La  Villette,  Cha- 
ronne,  Menilmontant,  Montrouge,  are  the  Paris  that 
in  days  of  revolution  poured  down  its  angry  sons,  and 
daughters,  too,  to  set  up  barricades  in  the  heart  of 
the  city,  that  in  days  of  law  and  order  sends  them 
to  the  center  for  their  daily  labor,  and  that  in  war 
sent  most  of  the  army  of  Paris  to  the  front.  This 
fringe  has  curious  little  worlds  of  its  own.  Work- 
men's dwellings,  sometimes  squalid,  sometimes  patterns 
of  deft  and  neat  thrift,  lie  up  to  quaint  little  living 
places  of  the  petite  bourgeoisie  that  peacefully  passes 
its  days  on  tiny  incomes,  admirably  content.  The 
hulking  skilled  blacksmith,  open-handed,  open-hearted, 
rich  in  his  world,  good  father,  good  honest  masterful 
husband,  ready  to  make  political  revolutions  whenever 
need  be;  the  little,  careful,  habit-loving,  mouselike, 
pattering  retired  clerk  who  is  ending  his  days  self- 
264 


FRANCE 

sufficiently  at  Montrouge — they  are  the  two  ends  of 
this  Paris. 

The  streets  of  Paris  are  like  wayward  rivers  that 
go  their  gait,  leaving  backwaters  from  each  bank  in 
their  course,  and  one  still  place  does  not  know  an- 
other. The  Boulevard  St.  Germain  leaves  islets  where 
eighteenth  century  houses  remain  and  where  the  last 
old  gentlemen  and  dowagers  of  ancient  families  sit 
sunning  themselves  of  a  fine  afternoon  in  what  they 
have  kept  of  the  courtyard  and  garden  of  their  man- 
sion, "entre  cour  et  jardin,"  and  whence  twice  or  thrice 
a  week  (I  have  watched  them  do  it)  they  drive  forth 
in  the  family  coach  shaking  on  its  springs.  Next 
door  is  a  modern  workmen's  dwelling,  next  door  but 
one  a  literary  Bohemian  cafe  opposite  brand-new  flats 
just  built;  and  new  flats,  literary  cafe,  workmen's 
dwellings  and  ancient  mansion  have  no  knowledge  of 
one  another's  existence. 

The  Rue  de  Rivoli  leaves  on  its  north  bank  some 
of  the  most  ancient  landmarks  and  the  greatest  arch- 
itectural beauties  of  Paris,  seventeenth  century  pal- 
aces with  wrought  iron,  sculptures  and  frescoes,  be- 
come almost  slums,  but  in  some  the  porter  sells  picture 
postcards.  Otherwise  the  little  side  streets  are  un- 
conscious. The  Boulevard  St.  Michel,  the  Boul* 
Miche,  crossing  the  Boulevard  St.  Germain,  dashes 
in  a  straight  line  through  the  old  network  of  little 
265 


FRANCE 

streets  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Seine.  It  leaves  un- 
visited  unknown  hovels,  some  of  the  worst  of  Paris, 
here  and  there  on  each  side  of  it.  It  does  not  even 
know  itself:  flats  in  the  Boulevard  St.  Michel  are 
lived  in  by  families  who  go  to  bed  at  ten  and  to  whom 
the  Latin  Quarter,  just  down-stairs,  is  an  unknown 
country.  Worse  than  that:  the  Latin  Quarter  itself 
does  not  know  itself  or  know  how  it  has  changed, 
how  bourgeois  Bohemia  has  become,  that  most  of  the 
students  who  keep  Latin  Bohemia  up  are  not  French, 
and  that  (mournful  to  old  students)  when  the  Latin 
Quarter  really  wants  to  amuse  itself  it  has  to  go  to 
Montmartre.  The  Boulevard  Montparnasse,  crossing 
the  Boulevard  St.  Michel,  washes  many  a  cafe  known 
to  Americans.  Some  of  the  cafes  are  known  only 
to  Americans.  The  boulevard  leaves  on  each  side 
many  curious  little  worlds  which  these  cafes  know 
not  of:  Russian,  Polish,  Jewish,  Armenian  gathering 
places,  but  chief  the  little  centers  of  French  life,  work- 
ing, basking,  just  living  life,  that  go  on  in  the  midst 
of  the  Bohemian  American  colony  and  know  not  a  jot 
of  it  and  which  it  never  learns  to  know. 


II 


This  diverse,  ancient,  live  Paris,  not  at  all  easy  to 
know  really,  faced  war  once  more.     One  heard  the 
guns  on  September  4,  1914;  one  had  heard  the  bombs 
266 


FRANCE 

from  Tauben  before,  and  one  heard  them  from  Zep- 
pelins after.  In  July,  1914,  frivolous  Paris  was  at 
its  best.  In  June  on  the  day  of  one  of  the  most  bril- 
liant Grand  Prix  Races  at  Longchamps,  one  heard 
of  the  murder  of  the  Austrian  heir  and  his  wife.  One 
rushed  from  the  races  to  a  tango  tea.  The  Paris  sea- 
son was  a  wild  whirl.  It  was  the  most  brilliant  and 
feverish  season  ever  known.  A  mad  season.  Society 
had  to  go  to  Parsifal  in  French,  to  Tristan  in  German, 
to  Russian  ballets,  to  Italian  operas  in  Italian,  to  Rus- 
sian operas  in  Russian  in  a  German  theater  in  the 
Champs  Elysees,  to  dancing  lessons,  to  masked  balls, 
to  "head"  balls,  to  "feet"  balls,  to  balls  where  the 
greatest  Parisian  ladies  undressed  as  Sultan's  favor- 
ites and  were  delighted  to  get  their  colored  photo- 
graphs into  illustrated  papers.  Nothing  was  too  ab- 
surd, dowagers  were  proud  to  learn  new  posturings 
from  South  American  dancing  masters,  and  every 
woman  with  taste  had  to  dye  her  hair  blue. 

One  week  saw  a  new  Paris.  It  was  not  a  new 
France,  but  it  did  seem  a  new  Paris.  No  one  know- 
ing France  doubted  her,  but  even  those  knowing  Paris 
best  were  not  quite  sure  of  her.  It  had  been  such  a 
wild,  thoughtless,  also  Boche-ridden  Paris  up  to  the 
last  minute,  a  Paris,  the  old  wiseacres  said,  only  too 
like  the  Paris  of  1869,  a  wilder  Paris  indeed,  if  com- 
parisons be  true,  and  also  much  more  Boche-ridden* 
It  was  a  new,  very  quiet  and  resolved  Paris,  a  Paris 
267 


FRANCE 

also  rid,  as  far  as  could  be,  of  her  Bodies.  I  saw 
many  of  them  going,  hectoring  it  up  to  the  last  train 
that  left  the  Gare  du  Nord  for  Berlin :  obvious  Prus- 
sian officers  whom  one  had  known  as  cafe  waiters, 
hotel  managers  who  had  secured  the  best  sites  in  Paris, 
the  lawn  tennis  pro.  of  my  little  club  in  the  Bois 
de  Boulogne,  who  had  all  the  looks  of  a  Prussian 
N.  C.  O.,  and  was  proved  a  spy  and  was,  I  hope  and 
believe,  shot.  Paris  was  not  rid  throughout  the  war 
of  the  spyings  in  which  Germany  has  by  universal 
consent  passed  mistress,  but  in  the  first  days  Paris 
thought  she  was,  and  she  shook  herself  free. 

Free  in  a  great  cause.  Who  did  not  know  Paris 
during  the  war  does  not  know  Paris.  The  enemy 
patiently  at  regular  intervals  announced  revolutions 
in  Paris,  Poincare  assassinated  and  new  petroleuses 
at  work.  One  was  amused  for  some  time  and  bought 
the  Swiss  papers  steadily  on  the  boulevards  to  read 
quotations  from  the  latest  German  press  "special  cor- 
respondence from  Paris."  Finally  the  joke  palled; 
the  enemy  had  overreached  himself  so  absurdly  at  his 
own  game.  "Such  slight  disturbances,"  said  a  German 
official  speaking  for  publication  of  food  troubles  in 
Berlin,  "naturally  will  occur  in  great  cities  like  Ber- 
lin, as  in  London  or  in  Paris."  This  did  revive  for 
a  day  one's  amusement  in  German  news.  The  German 
spy  who  discovered  stop-the-war  ferment  in  London  or 
in  Paris  deserves  the  Iron  Cross  in  Diamonds. 
268 


FRANCE 

War  Paris  those  who  knew  it  will  never  forget. 
"Let  us  hope  the  civilians  will  stick  it,"  said  the  text 
of  the  now  most  famous  cartoon  Forain  ever  drew,* 
and  they  did.  Fathers,  mothers,  wives  were  heroes 
also  in  their  way.  From  the  former  Prime  Minister 
and  from  the  charwoman  round  the  corner,  who  botK 
lost  their  eldest  sons,  I  heard  grief,  not  complaint. 
The  statesman  thenceforward  did  what  he  could  by 
speech  and  action  to  help  his  country  to  win  the  war, 
the  workwoman  in  black  went  on  with  her  work  quietly. 
She  had  to  go  on  with  her  work  to  live,  but  by  the 
nobly  simple  way  she  did  it  she  also  helped  her  coun- 
try. All  Paris  took  its  share  quite  simply.  After 
months  and  months  of  war,  not  a  murmur,  not  a  grum- 
ble. The  worst  I  ever  heard  was  in  1916:  "Don't 
you  think  it  ought  to  be  over  this  year?" 

The  great  do  not  need  or  want  praise  of  what  they; 
did:  women  nursing,  palaces  become  hospitals,  refu- 
gees cared  for,  Belgian  and  Serbian  children  homed 
and  mothered.  Humbler  folk  did  more:  they  stood 
fast  and  did  not  wince.  The  wife,  her  husband  at  the 
front,  the  mother,  her  sons  at  the  front,  both  sud- 
denly thrown  on  their  own  resources  (only  the  former 
with  an  allowance  from  the  State)  going  day  by  day 
quietly  to  market,  where  all  prices  rose  steadily,  buy- 
ing coals,  food,  all  necessaries  in  always  smaller  quan- 

*  One  soldier  In  the  trenches  to  another.  "Pourvu  qu'ils 
tiennent"  "Qui  gaf"  "Les  civils" 

269 


FRANCE 

titles  and  daily  dearer,  living  still  bravely  and  silently 
their  small  lives  through  every  hardship :  these  really 
were  the  soul  of  War  Paris.  Enough  can  never  be 
said  of  the  noiseless  courage  of  working  Paris  in  the 
war.  Not  a  murmur  was  heard  anywhere,  though  the 
hardships  were  great.  Who  could  have  blamed  young 
widows,  old  mothers  clamoring  for  peace?  Not  a 
woman  of  Paris  asked  for  any  peace  but  the  right 
peace.  They  "stuck  it"  indeed,  they  had  not  stopped 
to  think  much  about  it,  they  understood.  The  will 
to  win — it  was  finally  in  the  women  of  Paris  and  of 
France  that  it  lay.  Probably  no  national  armies  of 
men  can  ever  win  unless  the  women  behind  want  them 
to.  Behind  the  soldiers  of  France  were  their  stanch 
wives  and  mothers.  The  humblest  market  woman  also 
fought  the  battle,  because  she  was  patient  and  brave. 
There  were,  of  course,  some  flaws  and  shortcom- 
ings in  War  Paris.  The  army  contractor  who,  rub- 
bing his  hands,  said  in  my  hearing,  "This  war  is  a 
godsend  to  me,"  may  be  made  to  disgorge  a  trifle 
later  on.  The  pessimist  who  buttonholed  you  with 
sinister  news  generally  fled  to  Bordeaux  and  stopped 
there.  One  terror  was  bred  by  the  war — the  person 
having  access  to  special  sources  of  information.  He 
revived  the  days  before  a  public  press,  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  when  in  the  Palais  Royal  half  a  dozen 
men  who  absolutely  did  know  what  was  going  on 
would  spread  the  news  of  a  morning  for  all  Paris  to 
270 


FRANCE 

repeat  in  the  afternoon.  The  Press  being  under  mili- 
tary (and  political)  censorship,  the  "monsieur  bien 
informe"  (he  was  early  in  the  war  known  thus)  rioted 
to  his  heart's  content.  He  was  virulent  in  boulevard 
cafes  and  other  such  like  public  places.  He  came  in, 
secrets  bursting  out  all  over  his  face,  and  at  the 
first  word  said,  "Now,  this  is  not  hearsay,  I  know — 
Joffre — Briand — the  Kaiser — Japan — the  new  flank 
attack."  It  required  really  more  stamina  in  Parisians 
to  bear  with  the  person  whose  sources  of  information 
were  unimpeachable  than  with  any  other  minor  curse 
of  war-time.  The  plague  was  more  innocent  in  streets 
and  workshops,  where  the  brother-in-law  of  a  con- 
cierge, because  the  concierge  had  among  her  tenants 
the  sister  of  a  lamp-cleaner  at  the  War  Office,  knew 
positively.  ...  It  was  really  a  plague  among  the 
Tout  Paris  where  the  guileless  man  who  admitted 
he  did  not  know  coming  events  was  instantly  the  vic- 
tim of  the  man  who  said  he  knew. 

The  "well-informed  circles"  of  Paris,  beloved  of 
journalists,  were  not  the  soundest  or  even  the  best 
informed.  One  had  to  fall  back  once  more  upon  the 
people,  in  whom  nervousness  and  curiosity  in  the  most 
critical  moments  never  went  below  the  surface.  If 
Paris  never  flinched,  it  was  to  her  working  people, 
her  little  bourgeoisie,  her  old  artisans,  her  plebeian 
women  finally,  that  she  owed  it.  A  word  must  be 
said,  too,  of  her  fringe,  that  of  those  who  amused 


FRANCE 

her  in  peace-time.  The  little,  and  large,  world  of  the 
stage,  of  all  stages  from  the  opera  to  cinemas,  suf- 
fered greatly  and  suffered  in  silence,  and  for  many 
months  lived  on  two  fifty-centimes  meals  (sometimes 
only  one)  a  day,  and  those  only  through  charitable 
professional  good-fellowship.  Theaters  shyly  re- 
opened and  revived  old  farces,  or  tried  to  bring  the 
war  into  revues,  with  varying  success.  Even  those 
little  war  doings  of  Paris  were  not  without  their  brav- 
ery. Why  not  record  also  the  ladies'  war  fashions? 
During  the  war  Paris  dressmakers  and  milliners  rev- 
olutionized the  gowns  and  hats  that  Parisian  women 
and  women  all  over  the  world  (including,  they  say, 
Berlin)  wore.  The  French  soldier  back  from  a  year 
in  the  trenches,  meeting  his  wife,  said,  "Hullo,  I  had 
forgotten  this  was  carnival."  The  equanimity  with 
which  Paris  in  the  midst  of  war  invented  fashions 
of  flower-pot  and  trench  helmet  hats  and  baby  frocks 
for  women  of  all  ages  and  imposed  them  upon  the 
world,  even  upon  enemies,  was  also  typical  of  Paris. 
A  brave,  quiet,  tenacious  Paris,  by  whose  dogged 
spirit  the  Boches  must  have  been  surprised  as  much 
as  by  the  battle  of  the  Marne ;  a  Paris  that  bore  griefs 
and  faced  Zeppelins  unflinchingly.  In  a  little  cafe 
I  frequented  the  old  waiter  came  up  to  me :  "We  have 
just  lost  our  eldest  son,  Monsieur.  He  was  killed  out- 
right in  the  trenches  at  Soissons."  I  then  saw  that 
his  employer,  the  cafe  owner,  was  in  black.  I  shook 
272 


FRANCE 

hands  with  him,  and  the  other  customers  did.  That 
was  all,  and  all  the  humble  people  of  Paris  bore  the 
loss  of  their  sons  with  the  same  courage,  almost  with- 
out tears,  but  with  an  ever  deepening  hatred  for  the 
enemy,  that  will  not  die  out  for  generations.  When 
Tauben  and  Zeppelins  came  and  dropped  futile  bombs 
they  amused  Paris.  When  they  came  back  with  other 
bombs  and  slaughtered  workwomen,  elderly  workmen 
and  babies,  Paris  was  roused  not  to  fear,  but  to  a  fury 
that  will  never  in  this  age  forgive  or  forget. 


Ill 


The  cities  of  France  are  not  only  Paris  and  are  not 
all  smaller  Parises.  France  is  the  most  centralized 
great  power  in  Europe;  Paris  is  the  heart  and  brain 
of  the  country  more  than  the  capital  of  any  other  coun- 
try is,  and  every  Frenchman  talks  of  "Paris  and  la 
province."  All  the  same,  the  old  provincial  towns 
remain,  many  with  their  own  peculiar  character  un- 
changed, many  with  the  air  still  of  smaller  capitals, 
with  their  own  habits  and  ways  of  thought.  The  ex- 
pert Parisian  (few,  if  any,  foreigners  ever  attain  to 
the  knowledge)  can  tell  not  only  a  Marseillais,  a  Bor- 
delais  (comparatively  easy,  this),  but  also  (which  is 
much  subtler)  a  Toulousain,  a  Nimois,  a  Poitevin,  a 
Tourangeau,  a  Rouennais,  a  Remois,  a  Lillois,  by  his 
speech,  manners  and  frame  of  mind. 
273 


FRANCE 

The  delightful  Marseillais,  "Marius"  of  the  Canne- 
biere,  is  known,  of  course,  the  world  over,  childlike, 
noisy  as  ten  northerners,  impossible  to  take  seriously, 
canny  all  the  same.  Rich  Bordeaux,  the  aristocrat  of 
trading  cities,  the  town  of  the  grands  seigneurs  of 
wine,  with  some  stately  streets  of  eighteenth-century 
houses,  has  a  southern  speech  different  from  the 
speech  of  Marseilles,  knows  more  about  good  feeding 
than  any  other  town  in  the  world,  is  more  closely  in 
touch  with  England  than  is  Paris  or  any  other  French 
town,  takes  a  sincere  delight  in  its  own  particular  wet 
winters,  and  generally  enjoys  its  food,  its  wines  and 
life  easily.  "You  are  having  a  war  up  there,  aren't 
you?"  a  Bordelais  merchant  greeted  me  with,  when  I 
went  to  Bordeaux  with  the  French  Government  in 
September,  1914.  Classic  Toulouse  is  a  modern  po- 
litical town,  divided  between  Radical  caucuses  and 
militant  Roman  Catholicism.  Nimes  and  Montpellier 
are  the  towns  of  France  where  the  wars  of  religion 
are  still  remembered.  Busy,  bourgeois,  democratic 
Lyons  has  an  accent  of  its  own  (subtle  to  detect,  but 
experts  hear  it),  and  the  Lyonnais  is  reputed  a  good 
talker  with  a  good  opinion  of  himself.  In  Poitiers, 
with  its  extraordinary  cathedral,  the  "good  families" 
never  open  the  shutters  of  their  windows  on  the  street, 
mix  only  with  other  good  families  known  to  them  for 
four  generations  and  have  never  been  heard  to  wel- 
274 


FRANCE 

come  a  stranger.  Tours,  whither  the  young  English- 
man is  rightly  sent  to  learn  the  best  French,  is  the 
treasure  house  of  French  traditions  of  sanity  and  life, 
and  considers  modern  Paris  upstart  and  bad  form. 
Rouen,  beautiful  Rouen,  possesses  one  of  the  most 
stiffly  starched  social  sets  in  France,  terrifying  to  the 
newcomer,  and  (an  hour  and  a  half  by  rail  from 
Paris)  looks  upon  Paris  as  a  far-off  bad  world,  to 
which  reprehensible  Rouennais  husbands  slip  away  for 
a  day.  Reims,  martyred  Reims,  with  also  (experts 
say)  a  French  accent  of  its  own,  is  the  second  aristo- 
crat of  French  trading  cities  after  Bordeaux,  but 
with  a  sterner  spirit,  being  always  in  a  place  of  honor 
when  France  is  attacked,  and  at  the  same  time  as 
traditional  as  Tours,  but  gayer,  and  still  nobly  gay 
under  German  shells.  Lille  (still  captive  as  I  write) 
is  the  Lyons  of  the  North,  busy  and  prosperous,  but 
really  of  the  North,  quiet,  with  broad  slow  speech, 
and  is  also  like  Toulouse  a  political  town,  but  in  a 
different  way,  divided  between  the  Roman  Catholic 
conservatism  of  many  ruling  families  and  the  ad- 
vanced socialism  of  the  bulk  of  the  workmen  they 
employ.  Nancy,  inviolate  Nancy,  with  its  splendid 
Place  Stanislas,  the  old  capital  of  the  Dukes  of  Lor- 
raine, but  French  now  as  perhaps  no  French  town  is 
French,  is  the  outpost  on  the  border.  Every  Lorrain 
feels  that,  and  little  else  counts.  He  is  the  soldier  at 
275 


FRANCE 

the  frontier,  and  the  little  political  bickerings  of 
Toulouse  filtered  through  to  him  matter  very  little 
when  they  reach  him. 

IV 

I  was  in  Nancy  while  she  was  threatened  (she 
always  was  during  the  war)  and  Nancy  till  eight  p.  M., 
under  Tauben  and  a  few  miles  from  the  front,  was 
gayer  than  Paris.  The  women  marketing  and  bar- 
gaining, the  young  mothers  with  their  children  in  the 
squares,  the  Tout  Nancy  laughing  at  cafes,  brought 
one's  heart  into  one's  throat.  I  was  in  Bordeaux  also, 
easy-going  Bordeaux,  not  threatened  at  all,  thanks  to 
the  British  fleet.  The  difference  was  great,  but  it 
finally  was  only  a  difference  of  degree.  Every  city 
of  France,  with  different  temperament,  was  of  the 
same  mind.  Some  suffered  more,  but  all  suffered; 
some  saw  at  closer  quarters  the  thing  that  had  to 
be  done,  but  all  saw  it  had  to  be  done.  Bordeaux  and 
Marseilles  did  not  lose  fewer  sons  fighting  than 
Nancy.  In  gay  Bordeaux  was  many  a  bereaved  fam- 
ily, and  there  were  sons  and  brothers  bent  on  revenge. 
An  army  corps  from  pleasant  Provence,  the  fifteenth, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war  failed  and  was  disgraced ; 
formed  again  and  sent  back  to  fight  in  the  "unhealthi- 
est"  places,  it  was  redeemed  by  terrible  losses.  "What 
a  war  you  have  on  up  there,*'  said  jocular  Bordeaux, 
276 


FRANCE 

but  she  sent  her  sons,  too.  Every  city  and  hamlet  and 
village  of  France  sent  its  sons  and  each  mourns  some 
of  them.  Every  town  and  village  fought  for  the  one 
France. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

MEN  AND  WOMEN 


SHOWN  some  of  the  earlier  chapters  of  this  volume, 
a  candid  American  critic  said :  "I  am  quite  ready  to 
admire  French  wit,  French  vivacity,  French  thrift, 
French  solidity,  French  love  of  beauty,  but  I  draw 
the  line  at  admiring  French  rottenness."  Shown  the 
same  chapters,  a  candid  French  critic  said :  "Why  do 
you  deny  us  poetry?  Even  you  are  so  English  still 
that  you  can't  rid  yourself  of  the  sentimental  way  of 
looking  at  the  world.  You  can't  help  thinking  us 
hard  because  we  are  not  soft.  Do  you  think,  because 
our  bourgeoisie  builds  up  its  families  in  a  business- 
like way,  the  French  family  has  any  less  sentiment 
than  others?  The  old  English  hypocrisy!"  I  told 
the  first  critic  I  hope,  I  was  no  apologist  of  corruption 
and  the  second  that  I  tried  not  to  be  a  humbug. 

French  men  and  French  women  want  studying,  like 
other  men  and  women,  perhaps  more,  though  I  am 
not  sure  that  English  men  and  English  women  do  not 
want  quite  as  much.  Like  other  men  and  women,  alsoj 
they  might  do  worse  than  learn  to  know  themselves 
more ;  I  fancy  their  self-knowledge  is  better  than  that 
278 


FRANCE 

of  many  other  nations,  but  it  is  from  the  inside,  and 
they  have  no  notion  of  seeing  themselves  as  others  see 
them. 

Some  of  the  others  (including  no  doubt  my  candid 
'American  critic)  see  the  relations  of  French  man  and 
woman  something  after  this  manner.  The  man  is  a 
polished  debauchee  from  the  age  of  seventeen.  The 
girl  makes  a  marriage  of  convenience  and  a  year  or 
two  later  takes  on  a  lover.  Husbands,  lovers,  wives, 
mistresses  and  independent  ladies  who  are  not  mar- 
ried but  are  otherwise  as  bad  as  the  wives,  spend  four 
or  five  nights  a  week  in  parties  at  all-night  cafes, 
drinking  champagne  and  looking  on  at  or  joining  in 
lascivious  dances  and  go  rollicking  to  bed  after  sun- 
rise. There  are  no  homes.  Life  is  spent  at  cafes  and 
restaurants,  at  improper  plays,  at  more  cafes.  The 
one  pale-faced  fractious  child  of  a  Paris  couple  is  put 
out  to  nurse  till  old  enough  to  go  out  on  his  own  to 
Montmartre.  Over  all  this  is  laid  an  only  too  pleasant 
veneer  that  beguiles ;  beneath  it  is  rottenness. 

Many  French  families  see  themselves  something 
after  this  manner:  "Let  us  first  of  all  beware  of 
outsiders,"  they  say,  "for  ours  is  the  real  ark. 
Can  we  ever  be  sure  of  the  chastity  of  a  woman  who 
is  not  of  French  blood,  French  bred,  with  our  old 
traditions  in  the  marrow  of  her  bones?  The  Eng- 
lish girl?  Sweet,  charming,  but — those  flirtations! 
The  American  girl?  So  delightfully  vivacious,  such 
379 


FRANCE 

a  change  from  our  quiet  girls,  but — that  freedom, 
that  self-centeredness !  How  about  her  when  mar- 
ried? Simultaneously,  can  we  ever  be  sure  that  a 
foreigner  will  make  a  decent  husband?  Chic,  dis- 
tinguished, or  enterprising,  go-ahead,  money-making, 
they  are  indeed.  But  the  real  domestic  qualities, 
those  that  make  a  safe  husband,  a  good  father,  the 
solid  head  of  a  house — can  we  be  sure  of  finding 
them  in  a  man  who,  through  no  fault  of  his  own,  of 
course,  has  never  learned  at  the  French  hearth  to  look 
at  life  seriously?  Let  us,  after  all,  keep  to  ourselves. 
We  may  not  be  so  adventurous,  so  picturesque  as 
other  peoples.  But  we  are  content  to  go  on  leading 
our  old-fashioned  quiet  lives.  The  foreigners  who 
come  to  see  us  amuse  us  a  great  deal.  For  the  serious 
things  of  life,  for  the  duties  of  husband  and  wife  and 
parents,  for  the  family  virtues,  we  prefer  to  stick  to 
our  own  simple  traditions.  Sometimes  we  go  to  a 
cafe,  and  the  foreigners'  vivacious  manners  there  di- 
vert us  of  an  evening.  But  afterward  we  are  glad  to 
get  back  to  our  own  quiet,  plain  French  home." 

This  French  home  would  surprise  the  outsider  ex- 
ceedingly if  he  ever  got  into  it.  If  the  foreigner  has 
lived  ten  years  in  France  he  may  begin  to  hope  one 
day  that  he  will  be  allowed  over  the  threshold.  He 
then  will  be  even  more  surprised  to  find  that  it  is  he 
who  is  looked  upon  as  the  dangerous  amoralist,  the 
wolf  in  the  French  fold.  The  real  French  family 


FRANCE 

never  for  an  instant  doubts  that  it  alone  sets  the 
standard  of  honest,  pure  and  wise  living,  and  that 
there  is  always  some  suspicion  of  unwholesomeness  or 
folly  in  the  common  lives  of  other  peoples.  In  its 
turn  it  would  be  amazed  to  incredulity  by  the  out- 
sider's exactly  contrary  idea.  "Night  life,  amours, 
Montmartre,  faithless  wives,  callous  mothers?  My 
dear  Sir,  that  is  not  France.  We  are  France.  That 
is  no  more  France  than  the  toadstools  are  the  forest. 
We  are  the  trees.  If  you  see  only  the  toadstools — 
good  day." 

The  French  undoubtedly  are  even  more  incapable 
than  other  peoples  of  seeing  themselves  from  the  out- 
side. They  have  long  thought  out,  more  reflectively 
than  other  peoples,  their  own  idea  of  themselves ;  it 
has  not  occurred  to  them  to  consider  what  other  peo- 
ples think  of  them.  The  English  people  has  not 
troubled  itself  much  about  the  astonishing  contradic- 
tion it  offers  to  the  world,  such  as  that  between  its 
bovine  matter-of-factness  and  the  poetry  of  its  Ariels. 
French  men  and  women,  on  the  narrower  plane  of 
common  life,  have  perhaps  never  stopped  to  turn 
round  and  look  at  the  contradictions  which  they  ex- 
hibit to  the  bewildered  ingenuous  stranger.  They  have 
never  asked  themselves  whether  he  was  simple  enough 
to  take  the  tales  of  Maupassant  for  pictures  of  the 
French  family  or  to  suppose  that  families  admiring 
the  artist  who  wrote  La  Malson  Tellier  therefore 
281 


FRANCE 

turned  their  homes  into  disorderly  houses.  It  has 
never  occurred  to  them  that  when  he  watches  French 
fathers  and  mothers  and  sons  rolling  with  laughter 
at  farces  almost  worthy  of  Congreve  and  Wycherly 
he  may  picture  sons  and  mothers  and  fathers  repro- 
ducing the  farces  in  their  home  life.  It  has  never 
dawned  upon  them  that  the  modern  world  does  not 
understand  their  division  of  ordinary  common  life  into 
closed  compartments,  a  division  well  understood  by 
eighteenth-century  Europe  generally  and  England  in 
particular. 

On  the  stage  a  farce  "fit  to  make  an  ape  blush"; 
in  the  audience  French  husbands,  wives,  fathers,  moth- 
ers, sons,  married  daughters,  and  an  English  father, 
mother  and  daughter  long  settled  in  Paris — I  saw  the 
sight.  The  French  families  enjoying  themselves 
without  a  shade  of  self-consciousness ;  the  English 
mother  and  daughter,  both  Parisianized,  rocking  with 
laughter ;  the  English  father,  newer  to  Paris,  the  pic- 
ture of  shyness.  I  felt  for  him,  and  a  little  with  him. 
If  his  wife  and  daughter  had  not  been  there  he  would 
have  roared  with  the  rest.  He  had  not  yet  learned  to 
put  up  the  French  compartments  in  every-day  life. 
Among  the  French  audience  was  a  family  I  knew,  of 
strict,  almost  puritanical  way  of  living.  The  farce 
passed  off  it  like  water  off  a  duck's  back.  If  one  had 
asked  the  French  father  whether  such  a  farce  might 
not  harm  morals,  he  would  have  been  deeply  insulted. 


FRANCE 

What  had  the  one  to  do  with  the  other?  Would  the 
moral  life  of  a  family  depend  upon  a  farce?  Did  a 
little  innocent  amusement  ever  hurt  anybody?  And 
the  family  after  a  glass  of  beer  in  a  cafe  went  home. 
No  decent  people  could  have  listened  to  such  a  play, 
an  outsider  might  have  thought.  Only  a  depraved 
mind  could  imagine  such  a  play  affecting  life,  the 
French  father  would  have  replied  had  he  read  the 
thought. 

Several  low  terms  unfit  for  polite  ears  in  the  Eng- 
lish and  the  French  languages  regularly  take  the 
adjective  "French"  in  the  former  and  "Anglais"  in 
the  latter.  Even  the  study  of  gutter  slang  might  thus 
give  sharp  glimpses  of  the  comparative  psychology 
of  peoples. 

n 

If  one  try  to  get  at  the  truth  of  the  relations  be- 
tween French  men  and  women,  considered  at  once 
apart  from  the  contradictions  in  French  society  and 
the  ignorant  prejudices  of  outsiders,  what  foremost 
traits  will  one  finally  find?  One  of  the  first,  I  think, 
is  the  greater  hold  of  woman  over  man  in  this  than  in 
many  other  peoples.  The  slave  to  woman  is  probably 
more  often  French  than  even  Italian.  The  tempestu- 
ous petticoat,  though  an  English  poet  spoke  of  it, 
has  probably  a  more  Gallic  than  any  other  rule.  The 
argument  put  frankly,  sex  is  powerful  over  French- 
283 


FRANCE 

men.  Italians  flare  up  with  sudden  sometimes  mur- 
derous flames  of  passion.  Spaniards  solemnly  or  fu- 
riously cultivate  a  sort  of  formal  worship  of  women. 
Feminine  fascination  over  Frenchmen  is  as  strong 
while  it  lasts  and  is  more  lasting.  There  are  real 
Circes  for  Frenchmen,  men  who  throw  over  honored 
wife,  adored  children,  slowly  won  and  carefully  kept 
position,  for  a  woman;  men  who  peculate,  steal,  dis- 
grace themselves  for  a  woman.  The  thing  happens 
everywhere,  but  perhaps  more  often  in  this  people, 
and  more  dramatically.  Elsewhere  the  susceptible 
man  is  most  often  that  only.  In  England,  at  least, 
he  is  as  a  rule  a  detached  man,  and  when  bewitched 
he  has  only  himself  to  be  sorry  for.  Circe  charming 
the  steady  French  pere  de  famille  is  much  more  po- 
tent. Every  French  wife,  workman's  wife  or  wife  of 
a  bourgeois,  always  keeps  a  sharp  lookout,  knowing 
"what  men  are." 

In  the  working  classes  there  are  constant  little 
comedies  and  some  almost  sublime.  I  remember  one 
of  each  kind.  The  husband  after  a  tiff  had  gone  out 
on  his  own  on  Saturday  night.  The  wife  dressed  in 
her  best  and  (having,  of  course,  at  least  half  the 
week's  pay,  besides  what  she  had  of  her  own,  being  a 
French  wife)  went  to  the  same  cafe,  sat  at  the  other 
end  and  ordered  dinner.  The  husband  was  with  chums 
and  some  "ladies."  The  wife  never  saw  him  or  them, 
£84 


FRANCE 

but  ordered  her  dinner,  oysters,  white  wine,  a  nice 
rabbit  stew,  cheese,  coffee  and  a  liqueur.  As  she  en- 
joyed her  dinner,  the  husband  opposite  less  and  less 
enjoyed  his.  At  the  liqueur  he  came  over  to  her,  she 
suddenly  recognized  him  with  great  surprise — and 
took  him  home,  she  (discreetly)  triumphant.  An- 
other (or  the  same)  husband  went  off  for  a  week,  and 
spent  three  months'  pay  over  the  Circe  who  had  netted 
him.  Then  he  came  back.  "He  came  back,"  the  wife 
told  me,  "a  sight.  He  could  not  look  me  in  the  face. 
His  clothes  had  been  torn  and  not  been  darned.  He 
had  no  more  money — I  had  what  we  had.  He  had 
nothing  to  say  for  himself.  The  thought — another 
woman! — disgusted  me."  She  made  a  wry  face, 
paused  to  reflect,  then,  "Still  I  did  take  him  back." 
There  is  no  nation  in  which  women  are  as  much  world- 
wiser,  steadier,  and  as  much  more  the  force  of  con- 
tinuity not  variation  than  men,  as  the  French. 

Baudelaire's  "astrologues  noyes  dans  les  yeux  d'une 
femme"  are  Frenchmen.  Are  Anglo-Saxon  men  ever 
as  bewitched  or  as  uxorious?  For  the  Circe  is  by  no 
means  never  the  wife.  The  American  husband  is 
known  to  be  uxorious  in  his  own  peculiar  way;  the 
kind  of  American  wife  who  amuses  herself  expensively 
in  Europe  while  the  husband  makes  money  hard  in 
New  York  or  Chicago  is  familiar  to  Londoners  and 
Parisians.  You  would  not  catch  the  French  husband's 
285 


FRANCE 

uxoriousness  taking  the  form  of  keeping  his  wife  in 
luxury  on  the  other  side  of  an  ocean ;  when  he  is  the 
devoted  husband  his  wife  must  keep  by  him. 

Looked  at  from  the  woman's  point  of  view  the 
Frenchman  is  probably  less  of  a  Don  Juan  than  he 
thinks  he  is.  The  Frenchwoman  is  less  fascinated  than 
he  imagines.  In  the  main  hers  is  to  hold  him,  not  to 
be  held.  Sexual  influence  over  her  is  less  than  over 
him,  and  the  wildly  or  perversely  passionate  French- 
woman is  more  or  less  of  a  legendary  person.  In- 
deed, it  is  a  question  (a  delicate  question)  whether 
the  greater  slaves  to  man  are  not  to  be  found  among 
Anglo-Saxon  women.  The  complete  homme  a  femmes, 
the  conquering  lady-killer  who  really  is  the  abject 
slave  of  Eve,  is  French.  The  woman  to  whom 
man  is  the  awful  and  delightful  lord  and  master 
is  not  French.  I  wonder  whether  she  may  not  be 
Anglo-Saxon.  The  cold  and  cool  Englishwoman  is 
sometimes  a  fire  burning  in  ice.  The  women  whose 
lives  revolve  round  a  man's  life  are  not  often  French. 
To  use  frank  speech,  I  think  that  the  influence  of  sex 
is  greater  over  some  Anglo-Saxon  women  than  over 
any  Frenchwomen,  while  it  is  in  general  greater  over 
Frenchmen  than  over  Englishmen  or  Americans. 

Ill 

It  has  been  said  that  Frenchwomen  have  more  head 
than  heart.     I  do  not  subscribe  to  that.     But  they 
286 


FRANCE 

know  what  they  are  about,  and  one  can  only  admire 
them  for  it.  They  are  not  only  no  slaves  to  sex, 
though  well  knowing  how  to  use  its  weapons,  but  they 
are  finally  the  rulers.  There  is  almost  certainly  no 
modern  society  in  which  woman  holds  so  great  a  sway 
as  the  French.  She  does  not  count  by  the  direct 
power  of  sex  alone;  the  fascinating  Parisienne  of 
newspaper  chatter  is  a  very  bright,  showy  and  charm- 
ing person,  but  the  French  business  woman  is  in  the 
background  and  does  the  work.  She  does  the  work 
and  keeps  the  books  and  runs  the  business  in  a  hun- 
dred trades  which  the  general  public  knows  nothing 
of:  the  wholesale  trades  that  supply  millinery  and 
dressmaking  with  feathers,  ribbons,  furs,  stuffs,  but- 
tons, lace,  and  the  innumerable  feeding  industries  for 
the  business  of  clothing  men  and  women;  other  and 
various  businesses  in  which  she  is  the  accountant  and 
often  the  head  cashier ;  cafes  and  restaurants  in  which 
she  alone  keeps  all  the  accounts  minute  by  minute. 
I  know  many  business  houses  in  Paris  in  which  the 
wife  is  the  head  partner :  she  brought,  let  us  say  two- 
thirds  of  the  capital,  she  finally  directs  the  business; 
the  husband,  who  brought  the  remaining  third,  goes 
out  and  fetches  back  what  he  can  to  the  hive,  where 
she  is  the  queen,  though  he  no  drone — she  sees  to  that. 
The  power  of  the  Church  is  one  proof  of  the  power 
of  women  in  France.  It  depends  almost  solely  upon 
the  women.  Hardly  one  Anti-Clerical  politician  whose 
287 


FRANCE 

wife  is  not  pious.  A  famous  crisis  occurred  when 
Mme.  Jaures  insisted  that  her  daughter  should  be 
confirmed.  The  Socialist  leader  of  course  gave  way 
and  went  on  preaching  against  the  Church,  while  his 
wife  listened  to  the  priest's  sermons  and  prayed  for 
her  husband's  salvation ;  husband  and  wife  remained  de- 
voted to  each  other.  Men  disestablish  the  Churches, 
attack  the  Churches ;  families,  led  by  the  mother,  keep 
the  Churches  fast,  and  in  the  end  men  make  laws  but 
the  women  keep  customs  which  are  stronger.  Votes  for 
women  the  world  over  would  no  doubt  preserve,  not 
upset;  they  would  certainly  make  for  conservatism 
in  France.  But  the  women  do  not  ask  for  the  vote, 
they  have  the  power  already.  The  vote  is  a  narrow 
sovereignty  for  which  they  might  sacrifice  a  broader, 
deeper  human  sway.  Also,  by  the  way,  before  the 
war  the  number  of  males  about  equaled  that  of  females 
in  France,  which  perhaps  is  another  reason  why  there 
were  no  French  suffragettes  to  speak  of. 

The  cooperation  of  woman  in  the  world  of  work, 
especially  small  and  medium  trade  and  even  sometimes 
great  trade,*  is  certainly  larger  in  France  than  in 
most  other  nations.  How  much  stronger  custom  is 
than  law  is  shown  by  French  law.  It  was  only  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  that  the  French 
wage-earning  married  woman  obtained  from  Parlia- 

*  One  of  the  biggest  shops  in  the  world  was  run  for  years 
by  a  Frenchwoman — the  Bon  March6  In  Paris  by  Mme. 
Boucicaut 

£88 


FRANCE 

ment  ownership  of  her  own  earnings ;  before  then  her 
earnings  had  to  be  paid  by  the  employer  to  the  hus- 
band if  the  latter  claimed  them.  To  this  day  there 
is  no  French  married  woman's  property  act,  as  re- 
gards property  distinct  from  salary  or  wages.*  Un- 
less judicial  separation  in  certain  forms,  not  neces- 
sarily leading  to  divorce,  has  intervened,  the  husband 
is  sole  administrator  of  his  wife's  property,  and  she 
actually  can  not  open  a  banking  account,  or  if  she 
does  her  checks  are  worthless  unless  endorsed  also 
by  him.  Held  in  bondage  by  law,  the  French  wife 
rules  by  custom,  and  for  one  Englishwoman  who  has 
her  own  banking  account  and  no  knowledge  whatever 
of  her  husband's  business  there  are  two  Frenchwomen 
who  are  content  not  to  be  able  to  draw  a  franc  without 
their  husband's  consent  because  they  manage  most  of 
their  husband's  business  and  because  the  husbands 
are  the  figureheads  in  law  but  the  wives  govern  in 
practise. 

IV 

The  collaborator,  the  partner,  especially  when  the 
leading  partner,  always  commands  consideration. 
Woman  is  looked  up  to  in  France  as  much  as  in  any 
country  and  more  than  in  many.  Remember  that  the 
slave  to  woman's  sex,  the  "homme  a  femmes"  pays  one 

*  Owing  greatly  to  the  opposition  of  the  powerful  caste 
of  notaries,  who  thrive  on  expensive  marriage  settlements. 

289 


FRANCE 

kind  of  perpetual  tribute  to  woman.  In  societies 
where  men  are  more  sufficient  unto  themselves  and  en- 
joy their  chief  pastimes  and  exchange  their  best  ideas 
without  the  presence  of  women,  there  are  fewer  pur- 
suers of  woman,  but  woman  is  also  less  thought  about. 
The  Frenchman,  who  thinks  about  woman  probably 
more  than  any  other  man,  has  more  respect  for  her 
than  most  other  men.  His  respect  spreads  from  one 
pole  to  another  and  can  truly  be  said  to  include  the 
harlot  of  a  night  and  his  own  mother.  There  is  no 
country  where  the  tie  between  mother  and  son  is  so 
close  and  unbreakable,  and  there  is  none  where  the 
worst  debauchee  so  seldom  forgets  that  the  poorest 
fallen  woman  still  is  a  woman.  In  Paris  night  haunts 
English,  American,  Russian,  German,  South  Amer- 
ican roysterers  may  be  brutal  to  a  courtezan,  the 
Frenchman  almost  never,  and  the  woman  herself  is 
not  cowed  as  she  is  often  elsewhere,  but  still  keeps 
some  spirit  and  still  stands  on  some  sort  of  peculiar 
dignity  of  her  own.  Is  this  dignifying  prostitution? 
You  may  call  it  so.  But  even  if  a  woman  be  a  prosti- 
tute, it  will  be  better  for  her — and  for  you — to  treat 
her  decently. 

At  the  other  pole  are  the  French  mother  and  son 
— the  one  tie  that  never  snaps.  A  Frenchman 
estranged  from  his  mother  is  called  a  monster,  what- 
ever the  mother  did ;  a  French  mother  renouncing  her 
son  (infanticide,  due  to  temporarily  unbalanced  minds 
290 


FRANCE 

in  betrayed  girls,  being  left  out  of  account)  is  un- 
known. The  Frenchwoman  who  has  become  a  mother 
is  almost  always  thenceforward  mother  first  and  wife 
afterward.  The  transformation  is  probably  rarer  in 
Anglo-Saxon  women.  Is  it  a  transformation?  The 
woman  more  mother  than  wife  was  no  doubt  born  so. 
Not  one  French  mother  in  ten  will  sacrifice  the  chil- 
dren she  bore,  if  the  tragic  dilemma  occur,  to  the 
man  who  begat  them.  The  English  wife  more  often, 
I  think,  in  such  a  desperate  choice,  would  choose  the 
man.  The  Frenchwoman  at  bay  is  the  lioness  with 
her  cubs.  The  acquired  thought  of  a  man  and  woman 
companionship,  higher  (it  may  be)  than  the  tie  of 
flesh  between  mother  and  offspring,  is  rarely  familiar 
to  her.  This  is  more  evidence  that  sex  has  less  hold 
over  the  Frenchwoman  than  French  novelists  pretend 
to  think  than  over  the  women  of  some  other  peo- 
ples. Is  there  any  more  tragic  figure  than  the  pros- 
titute keeping  with  her  horrible  earnings  a  child 
growing  up  in  a  village  a  long  way  off  whom  she 
visits  adoringly  once  a  month?  A  too  well-known 
figure  in  France. 

V 

This  should  be  a  tale  written  by  Maupassant.     A 

party  of  French  and  English  men  went  to  a  disorderly 

house  in  a  little  French  country  town.    They  were  the 

only  visitors.    The  place  seemed  to  be  in  subdued  ex- 

591 


FRANCE 

citement,  though  the  rooms  were  dark  and  empty. 
The  women  turned  up  the  lights,  put  two  sou  pieces 
into  mechanical  organs  and  danced  in  couples  absent- 
mindedly.  The  men,  no  roysterers,  stopped  the  de- 
jected dancing  and  said:  "What  is  the  matter?  Tell 
us."  "Then  you  have  noticed  something?"  The 
women  spoke  all  at  once.  "Yes,  it  is  true  we  are  not 
ourselves  to-night.  You  see,  Madame  had  a  new  baby 
this  morning,  and  that  has  upset  us.  We  were  all 
up-stairs  looking  at  the  dear  little  thing.  It  will  go 
away  to-morrow — it  can't  be  kept  here,  can  it? — and 
we  shall  never  see  it  again,  so  we  wanted  to  see  all  we 
could  of  it."  Madame  was  the  co-lessee  of  the  dis- 
orderly house  leased  by  the  municipality  according 
to  law  to  a  married  couple  only.  The  men  shook 
hands,  and  went  away,  thinking. 

Some  Romantics  of  the  fleshly  school  sang  the 
harlot  till  one  felt  it  was  time  for  poets  to  give  the 
ordinary  respectable  woman  a  chance.  But  no  stu- 
dent of  the  men  and  women  of  a  nation  can  afford  to 
ignore  the  prostitutes — or  the  bullies.  The  latter  in 
France  can  be  dismissed  in  a  sentence :  there  is  nothing 
lower  in  humanity.  Unluckily  they  can  not  be  got  rid 
of  so  easily  in  fact.  They  are  the  one  worst  curse  of 
Paris,  and  a  few  other  large  towns  of  France,  Mar- 
seilles, Lyons,  Bordeaux.  Police  and  legislators* 

*The  latter  by  the  law  against  vagabondage  special. 
The  plague  has  of  late  grown  In  London,  by  the  way.  Stu- 
dents in  Paris  did  once  toward  1890  make  a  successful  at* 

292 


FRANCE 

strive  to  stamp  them  out,  but  with  little  apparent 
success. 

The  women  are  worth  some  study.  The  first  thing 
learned  by  most  students  of  the  subject  in  France  is 
to  take  fifty  per  cent,  off  the  theories  of  some  senti- 
mentalists. The  facts  are  generally  now  looked  in 
the  face,  that  the  proportion  of  women  who  were 
tricked  or  driven  to  prostitution  and  did  not  take  to 
it  of  their  own  free  will  is  low,*  that  the  proportion 
of  those  who  wish  to  be  or  can  be  reclaimed  is  about 
equally  low,  and  that  those  who  do  not  fall  to  the 
lowest  degradation  neither  pity  themselves  nor  are 
the  proper  objects  of  extraordinary  pity.  Betrayal, 
violence,  temperament  are  various  causes  of  prostitu- 
tion in  France  as  elsewhere,  but  the  chief  cause  in  this 
country  at  all  events  is  economic,  not  sheer  hunger, 
or  seldom,  but  the  unequal  distribution  of  wealth,  the 
increased  contact  between  the  rich  who  are  or  seem 
idle  and  the  workers  who  earn  hard  livelihoods  in 
modern  civilization,  where  all  classes  above  the  poorest 
are  thrown  more  and  more  together,  the  rapid  growth 
of  luxury.  In  Paris  (and  as  much  in  London,  New 
York,  Berlin)  the  poorer  come  nearer  the  richer  to- 
day than  before  and  can  draw  comparisons,  on  which 

tack  upon  the  vermin.  They  called  or  asked  no  police  or 
authorities  for  help  or  by  your  leave,  but  suddenly  rose, 
and  in  a  night  or  two  had  purged  the  Latin  Quarter. 

*  Thus  most  observers  agree  now  that  the  so-called  White 
Slave  Trade  traffics  in  fewer  innocent  victims  than  some 
well-meaning  social  reformers  imagine. 


FRANCE 

envy  feeds.  The  woman  worker  in  great  cities  comes 
hourly  across  the  woman  who  enjoys  with  ease  all  the 
things  beyond  anything  she  reaches  by  toil.  Think, 
in  Paris,  of  the  dressmaking  girl  who  works  some- 
times ten  and  twelve  hours  a  day  (big  dressmakers 
evade  laws  and  labor  inspectresses)  making  such 
dresses  as  she  would  love  to  wear,  sometimes  indeed 
for  great  ladies  of  a  world  she  knows  to  be  beyond 
her  ken,  but  also  for  demi-mondaines  who  may  have 
come  from  the  very  same  little  humble  world  as  she. 
No  woman  loves  real  luxury,  not  finery  but  perfect 
art  of  dressing,  as  the  Frenchwoman.  Girls  whose 
workday  in  the  Rue  de  la  Paix  is  an  hourly  tempta- 
tion, the  homme  a  femmes  lurking  everywhere,  do 
resist,  and  one  must  without  Pharisaism  call  them 
brave  girls,  but  many  give  in.  Not  only  girls ;  for 
love  of  luxury,  devouring  covetousness  for  luxury, 
the  extraordinary  growth  of  luxury  play  havoc  among 
some  married  women  of  the  poorer  middle  class,  and 
the  Paris  police  reports  say  that  the  petite  bourgeoise, 
the  clerk's  wife,  the  small  official's  wife,  who  while 
keeping  up  all  the  appearances  of  her  home  life  sells 
herself  in  order  to  look  like  a  woman  of  fashion,  is  a 
type  on  the  increase. 

The  worst  of  it  is  that  ifor  the  good  girls  their 

virtue  is  too  often  their  sole  reward.     Paris  affords 

some   shocking   comparisons   between   the   demi-mon- 

daine  who  has  succeeded  at  forty  and  the  working- 

294 


FRANCE 

woman  who  at  that  age  must  work  harder  than  ever, 
often  for  decreasing  pay.  The  comparisons  can  be 
made  anywhere,  but  in  Paris  they  seem  easier  for  the 
good  woman  to  make :  she  tramps  back  tired  with  tired 
children  and  grumpy  husband  through  the  Bois  de 
Boulogne,  and  "Mile,  de  Bourgogne"  (they  played  to- 
gether, living  in  neighboring  house  porter's  lodges) 
drives  past  from  the  races  in  her  car,  magnificent  and 
respected,  in  a  way,  in  her  own  particular  set — and 
the  honest  woman  is  only  human. 

She  has  her  compensations,  and  (when  she  has 
rested)  she  remembers  and  holds  her  head  up.  I  knew 
an  old  peasant  woman  near  Paris  with  two  daughters. 
One  had  married  a  penniless  incompetent  journeyman 
tailor  and  half  starved ;  the  other  had  had  four  lovers 
and  the  fifth  kept  her  in  comfort  and  luxury,  in- 
troducing her  to  his  fellow  students  who  treated  her 
like  a  lady.  The  old  mother  received  the  lover  po- 
litely, but  in  private  poured  wrath  upon  the  daughter, 
and  the  peasant  family  was  torn  by  the  feud  between 
the  girl  who  had  gone  straight  and  the  girl  who  had 
not.  The  latter,  I  heard  afterward,  was  "made  an 
honest  woman  of"  by  a  sixth  gentleman,  and  the 
family  is  reunited. 

The  honest  woman  has  compensations;  the  other 

one  has  hers  also.     There  is  a  particular  type  in  the 

French  demi-monde  which  is  almost  entirely  French : 

the  professional  prostitute  of  hard  bourgeois,  busi- 

295 


FRANCE 

nesslike  temperament.  She  accepts  the  life  with  her 
eyes  open,  leads  it  with  care  and  measure,  has  no 
small  vices,  never  drinks,  never  takes  drugs  as  her 
wild  sisters  at  Montmartre  do,  never  squanders,  but 
puts  money  by,  and  at  fifty  disappears  into  piety, 
respectability  and  a  tiny  provincial  town  where  she 
lives  to  her  death,  a  respected  Lady  Bountiful  who 
plays  the  Cure  at  bezique  every  Saturday  evening, 
has  her  pew  in  church,  and  on  stated  Sundays,  ac- 
cording to  ancient  country  custom,  pays  for  the  pain 
beni — the  special  milk  bread  that  the  priest  will  bless. 
It  may  be  cynical  to  feel  dislike  for  so  edifying  an  end. 


VI 


The  man  and  the  woman  "found  a  family."  The 
large  and  ornamental  and  tattered  and  soiled  and  pic- 
turesque fringe  round  French  society  notwithstand- 
ing, the  stuff  of  it,  all  the  same,  is  the  family  thus 
"founded."  The  careless  observer  is  hypnotized  by 
the  fringe.  The  French  family  is  so  much  accustomed 
to  look  upon  itself  as  the  only  sensible  and  solid  family 
in  the  world  that  it  is  scarcely  even  aware  that  such 
careless  observation  of  France  exists  and  would  be 
amazed  to  learn  how  largely  it  does  exist.  The  family 
is  "founded" — founded  is  the  right  word.  The 
eighteenth-century  marriage  has  long  since  ceased  to 
exist — the  girl  of  seventeen  going  from  a  nunnery 
296 


FRANCE 

to  the  arms  of  a  rake  of  forty-five — except  in  melo- 
drama. The  French  girl  of  to-day  is  very  nearly  as 
free  as  the  English ;  the  young  Frenchman  of  to-day 
marries  younger  than  ever.  But  marriage  is  still 
planned  and  does  not  merely  happen.  Mothers  and 
fathers  plan  it,  the  man  plans  it,  the  girl,  discreetly 
through  her  mother,  may  plan  it.  All  look  far  ahead, 
to  future  means,  connections,  position,  future  pros- 
pects for  the  children  not  yet  born  or  thought  of.  It 
is  still  a  social  bargain,  the  man  bringing  his  position, 
salary  and  connections,  the  girl  her  dowry  and  the 
social  connections  and  influence  of  her  parents,  to 
"found  a  family."  The  man  seldom,  the  girl  almost 
never,  will  throw  prudence  to  the  winds  and  marry 
heedless  of  future  prospects.  Thorough  marriages 
of  convenience  are  probably  as  rare  as  in  other  peo- 
ples. Unalloyed  love  matches  are  rarer.  Romeo  and 
Juliet  call  this  a  hard,  cruel  and  very  unsatisfactory 
way  of  taking  what  life  has  to  give.  It  is  a  hard  way, 
but  is  it  really  cruel  or  altogether  unsatisfactory? 

The  family  is  founded.  Husband  and  wife  are 
still  only  beginning  to  learn  to  know  each  other.  If 
they  had  courted  for  years  instead  of  months,  they 
might  be  a  bit  more  advanced  in  the  knowledge,  but 
they  would  still  be  learning.  The  family  exists — in- 
stinctively one  tiny  community  bulwarked  against  the 
rest  of  the  world.  Barring  catastrophes — and  they 
will  happen,  but  some  must  always  happen — the  com- 
297 


FRANCE 

munity  of  interests  and  social  aims  combined  before 
the  match  was  made  help  to  keep  the  home  together ; 
they  have  even  been  known  to  keep  homes  together  in 
extreme  cases  when  hatred  had  grown  up  between  man 
and  wife.  Better  such  a  home  be  split  ?  Perhaps  for 
the  individual,  probably  not  for  society. 

The  divine  average  concerns  us  most.  A  French 
writer  at  the  antipodes  of  Walt  Whitman,  La  Roche- 
foucauld, said  that  there  are  happy  marriages  but  no 
delightful  ones.  The  divine  average  in  French  fam- 
ilies is  the  solidest,  the  most  united  of  families,  united 
to  the  point  of  what  would  be  boredom  for  many  Eng- 
lish or  American  families,  united  in  work,  in  play, 
innocent  even  of  man's  club  life,  let  alone  of  woman's, 
scarcely  ever  parted  by  travels,  by  the  drifting  apart 
of  sons  and  daughters,  keeping  together  in  grand- 
children and  great-grandchildren,  peopling  some  little 
seaside  resorts  that  I  know  summer  after  summer  with 
generation  after  generation  in  patriarchal  continuity. 
What  about  Man  and  Woman  in  it  all  ?  The  average 
of  both  is  sunk  in  the  family.  And  some  complete 
unions  of  man  and  woman  grow  out  of  life,  quarrels, 
interests,  sorrows,  joys  lived  through  side  by  side 
even  without  an  initial  flame  of  early  passion  at  all. 

Sometimes  the  woman  alone  keeps  the  home  to- 
gether ;  there  are  unjcnown,  not  meek,  but  strong  hero- 
ines among  Frenchwomen.  The  man  a  Circe's  slave ; 
the  wife  knowing  and  forgiving ;  actually  giving  away 


FRANCE 

piece  by  piece  the  dowry  she  brought,  that  is  poured 
into  the  Circe's  lap ;  doing  it  out  of  no  humble  sacri- 
fice, but  only  for  the  high  thought-out  purpose  of 
keeping  whole  the  hearth ;  at  the  last  a  mother  to  the 
old  crushed  husband,  with  a  virile  head  and  heart  for 
two. 

Finally  the  Frenchwoman  is  mother  beyond  any- 
thing, beyond  even  a  woman's  pride.  And  the  chil- 
dren, for  whom  it  all  is  done,  without  whom  the  hearth 
is  a  word?  Some  of  my  readers  may  be  incredulous, 
but  French  people  actually  do  have  children.  The 
well-to-do  bourgeoisie,  which  is  the  substance  of 
French  society,  runs  to  three  children  per  couple,  the 
minimum  number  required  by  social  science  for  carry- 
ing on  the  nation,  and  I  know  many  families  of  four, 
five  and  six  children.  The  low  birth-rate,  which  has 
shown  for  some  time  only  a  bare  margin  of  excess  over 
deaths,*  is  due  to  the  barrenness,  not  of  the  solid 


*  The  annual  birth-rate,  contrary  to  some  loose  statements 
made,  only  twice  fell  below  the  death-rate  before  the  war, 
namely,  in  1907  and  1911.  The  official  figures  from  1907 
were: 

1907— Excess  of  deaths  over  births 19,071 

1908— Excess  of  births  over  deaths 48,043 

1909— Excess  of  births  over  deaths 14,608 

1910 — Excess  of  births  over  deaths 71,418 

1911— Excess  of  deaths  over  births 34,869 

1912 — Excess  of  births  over  deaths 57,911 

1913— Excess  of  births  over  deaths 41,901 

The  average  annual  excess  of  births  over  deaths  during 
the  period  of  six  years  from  1908  was  31,422.  The  French 
population  on  March  5,  1911,  was  39,602,258.  The  excess  ol 

299 


FRANCE 

bourgeoisie,  but  of  the  fringe,  the  irregulars,  the 
floating  population  and  also  of  the  solid  peasantry, 
except  that  of  Brittany,  Picardy,  and  a  small  portion 
of  Normandy.  The  solid  bourgeoisie  in  fact  does  not 
see  the  fun  of  making  up  by  extra  prolificity  for  the 
barrenness  of  other  classes. 

The  French  child  for  which  the  hearth  is  kept  and 
for  which  the  Frenchwoman  sinks  herself  into  the 

births  over  deaths  in  1913  was  10  per  10,000.    Some  points 
of  comparison  with  other  European  nations  are: 
1912 — Excess  of  births  over  deaths — France  57,911 

German  Empire  839,887 
Great  Britain        385,800 

Some  average  annual  excesses  of  births  over  deaths  per 
10,000  are: 

France    German  Empire    Great  Britain 
1841-5  54  106  109 

1846-50  28  81  95 

1876-80  29  131  146 

1891-5  1  130  118 

1901-5  18  149  121 

1906-10  7  141  116 

1911  —9        113          98 

1912  15        127          105 

Statistics  for  1913  show  an  excess  of  births  over  deaths 
in  49  Departments  and  the  reverse  in  38  Departments.  The 
numbers  of  the  French  population  are,  it  must  be  noted, 
maintained  almost  solely  by  northeastern  France  (Nord 
and  Pas  de  Calais,  30,000  excess  of  births  over  deaths,  55 
and  100  per  10,000,  respectively)  and  Brittany  (Morbihan 
and  Finistere  nearly  11,000  excess  of  births  over  deaths, 
82  and  105  per  10,000,  respectively).  The  valley  of  the 
Garonne,  the  Dauphin6,  the  country  at  the  sources  of  the 
Seine  and  Normandy  (except  Seine  Inf6rieure,  capital 
Rouen)  show  the  greatest  excess  of  deaths  over  births,  the 
highest  being  56  per  10,000  in  the  Department  of  the  Gers. 
No  statistics  show  which  classes  are  carrying  on  the  race 
and  which  are  attempting  race  suicide.  It  seems  probable 
that  the  former  are  the  bourgeoisie  and  the  more  prosper- 
ous industrial  wage-earners,  the  latter  the  peasantry  of 
southern  and  central  France. 

300 


FRANCE 

mother,  for  which  the  good  average  French  father 
lives  more  wholly  than  most  other  best  fathers — the 
French  child  is  not  the  best  point  of  the  French  fam- 
ily. Something  in  the  French  character  seems  in- 
compatible with  childhood.  The  French  child  begins 
by  being  a  real  child;  the  incompatible  grown-ups 
change  it.  They  take  it  from  the  wrong  end  up  and 
turn  it  upside  down.  It  may  be  an  Englishman's 
prejudice  to  fancy  that  the  only  grown-ups  who  really 
understand  children  are  the  English.  The  French 
are  a  very  grown-up  people  (child  French  is  foolish, 
child  English  charming)  and  make  violent  efforts, 
when  parents,  to  be  childlike.  There  is  of  course  noth- 
ing a  child  hates  more,  or  that  is  worse  for  him  if  he 
accepts  it,  than  a  grown-up  being  childlike.  Every 
proper  parent  is  more  serious  talking  to  the  boy  of 
three  or  five  or  seven  than  to  any  grown-up.  At  three 
(or  earlier)  the  child  already  spots  any  putting  off 
or  fooling.  Who  would  dare  risk  being  caught  out 
by  his  son  of  seven  ?  The  French  fathers  and  mothers 
dare.  They  worship  their  offspring  with  a  care  that 
often  or  generally  absorbs  their  lives.  They  do  not 
understand  what  respecting  a  child  means.  Watch 
over  it,  cuddle  it,  give  up  every  moment  and  every- 
thing to  it,  in  a  way  English  parents  would  not  think 
of,  well  and  good  and  cheerfully;  remember  that  it 
already  has  its  little  personality,  remember  it  and 
stand  in  awe  of  it — that  they  had  not  thought  of. 
301 


FRANCE 

At  the  worst  they  make  toys  of  their  children;  at 
the  best  they  try  to  make  little  gentlemen  and 
ladies  of  them,  for  the  children's  benefit,  they  im- 
agine, really  for  their  own  satisfaction.  The  French 
child  does  not  like  it  at  all,  being  as  natural  as  any 
other,  but  has  to  get  used  to  it.  He  grows,  ca- 
joled, brooded  over,  lied  to  with  white  lies  (are  they 
ever  white  toward  a  child?),  made  loving  fun  of, 
adored,  worshiped,  not  respected.  One  wonders  what 
extraordinary  conception  of  the  madness  of  grown- 
ups he  must  acquire.  All  boys  must  naturally  think 
grown-ups  mad.  The  French  boy,  who  almost  never 
has  a  father  to  be  a  serious  boy  with  him,  must  think 
them  more  so.  Mr.  Kenneth  Grahame's  exquisite 
books  upon  children  and  grown-ups  could  not  have 
been  French,  any  more  than  Lewis  Carroll's  Alices. 
It  is  a  splendid  thing  about  the  French  boy  that  he 
often  remains  a  real  boy  in  spite  of  his  parents. 

The  fond  French  parent  does  not  feel  with  the 
child,  humors,  does  not  understand  its  dreams,  smiles 
indulgently  at  fairies,  teaches  children  polished 
worldly  wisdom  like  La  Fontaine's,  has  almost  abol- 
ished nursery  rhymes,  discourages  nonsense  verse 
strongly,  turns  the  old  original  store  of  folklore  into 
plain  human  tales  as  Perrault  did,  wants  the  child  in 
fact  not  to  be  a  child  and  lets  the  child  see  the  wish. 
The  boy  grown  to  first  manhood,  the  girl  grown  to  first 
302 


FRANCE 

womanhood — and  the  French  parent  suddenly  under- 
stands them  quite  well,  now  that  the  uncomfortable, 
incomprehensible  dream-clouds  of  childhood  have 
melted  into  thin  clear  air. 

Every  girl,  no  doubt,  is  best  understood  by  her 
mother,  but  the  French  mother  is  probably  the  best 
at  understanding  sons.  She  watches,  like  every 
mother,  over  her  daughters,  shields  them  ever  against 
such  flirtation  and  spooning  as  in  England  are  con- 
sidered innocent.  Her  sons  she  understands — only 
too  well,  it  may  be,  sometimes.  Yvette  Guilbert,  heart 
and  soul  social  reformer  as  well  as  great  artist,  I 
remember  telling  me  with  fiery  indignation  of  parents 
she  knew  who  were  anxious  and  alarmed  because  their 
boy  of  nineteen  still  had  no  mistress,  telling  the  anec- 
dote as  an  example  of  deplorable  French  upbringing 
contrasted  with  the  English,  which  she  admired.  The 
instance  was  an  extreme  one.  Please  do  not  run  away 
with  the  idea  that  all  or  even  many  French  mothers 
choose  their  sons'  mistresses  for  them.  But  take  the 
cases  in  which  they  do:  let  Anglo-Saxon  parents  re- 
flect frankly  whether  that  course  is  worse  than  making 
believe  that  such  things  as  amours  of  their  sons  are 
not?  Is  Bjornstjern  Bjornson  right  in  The  Glove* 

*  I  remember  a  "White  League"  being  started  with  great 
apparent  success  among  my  French  fellow  students  at  about 
the  time  the  play  was  first  performed  in  France.  What 
became  afterward  of  the  League  I  never  heard. 


FRANCE 

and  should  the  bridegroom  go  as  white  to  the  altar  as 
his  bride?  Possibly.  But  does  he?  If  not,  the  ques- 
tion is  whether  the  parental  policy,  to  which  all 
brought  up  in  English  homes  can  look  back,  is  better, 
of  the  elder  eyes,  that  refuse  to  see,  the  wise  voice  that 
never  whispers  a  word  of  counsel,  the  home  that  puts 
up  a  blank  stone  wall  against  sex. 

The  youth  launched  forth  by  fond  parents  plunges 
into  wild  student  life.  The  wild  Bohemia  of  the  Latin 
Quarter !  Henri  Miirger's  Vie  de  Boheme  set  a  tale  of 
riotousness  dashed  with  sickly  sentimentality  going 
that  goes  on  still — outside  Paris.  Students  who  have 
to  pass  exams,  and  there  really  is  quite  a  large  num- 
ber of  them,  lead  almost  monkish  lives  and  would  give 
points  in  asceticism  to  Oxford  and  even  perhaps  Har- 
vard. The  others,  for  whom  the  university  is  a  place 
to  sow  wild  oats  in,  are  of  course  sad  dogs :  they  never 
would  forgive  you  for  thinking  otherwise,  trust  a 
Frenchman  for  boasting.  In  reality  most  of  them 
lead  prematurely  domesticated  lives,  which  have  at 
least  the  merit  of  frankness,  with  respectable  hum- 
drum mistresses  who  know  beforehand  that  the  life  will 
last  four  or  five  years  or  so.  Four  or  five  years  of 
curiously  sedate  and  bourgeois  profligacy.  Drink,  as 
every  one  knows,  is  not  the  French  forte  and  enters 
only  incidentally  into  this  mildly  wild  student  life.  A 
certain  abnormal  corruption  is  very  nearly  unknown. 
304 


FRANCE 
vn 

The  reprobate  youth,  given  his  head  by  fond  par- 
ents, is  naturally,  in  the  French  family  and  social 
logic,  expected  to  be  a  model  husband  when  he  settles 
down  and  very  frequently  is.  French  men  and  women 
are  very  human,  callously  human,  wisely  human,  take 
it  either  way,  as  you  please.  Will  they  in  the  French 
future  go  on  being  so  human?  I  suppose  that  what- 
ever happens  mankind  will  go  on  being  human.  The 
power  for  lasting  in  French  men  and  women  precisely 
is  that  they  do  rest  finally  upon  plain  brutal  human 
facts,  without  illusions,  pretenses  or  dreams.  In  any 
society  of  the  future  there  will  presumably  be  as  much 
of  man  and  woman,  and  as  much  of  father,  mother  and 
child  as  ever. 

Anyhow  if  the  family  breaks  up,  the  French  family 
will  be  the  last  to  break  up.  But  the  great  and  in- 
creasing fringe  of  French  society  is  what  future 
changes  may  affect.  It  is  economic  changes  that 
threaten  to  affect  human  relations  in  France  as  else- 
where. The  extraordinary  growth  of  luxury,  the 
extraordinary  promiscuity  of  those  who  enjoy  it  and 
those  who  would  appreciate  it  and  have  it  not,  are 
strong  dissolvents  of  simple  human  ties.  The  fringe 
of  irregulars  round  French  society  must  thus  in  all 
probability/  increase.  The  primeval  relation  between 
305 


FRANCE 

man  and  woman  must,  while  society  goes  on  as  it  does, 
be  more  and  more  affected  by  the  inequality  of  wealth. 
The  brave  girl  who  resists  temptation  will,  I  fear, 
grow  scarcer.  From  the  ranks  of  the  earners  who  own 
nothing  a  gradually  greater  contingent  of  their  wom- 
enfolk will  drift  away  and  join  the  irregulars.* 
Would  any  imaginable  new  social  system  bring  a 
remedy?  The  "emancipation"  of  women  would  bring 
none.  Among  modern  women,  those  who  enjoy  most 
independence  precisely  are  some  of  the  irregulars. 
The  equal  employment  of  female  and  male  labor  would 
still  less  be  a  remedy.  A  new  social  state,  after  some 
of  the  many  Socialist  or  Communist  methods,  involv- 
ing redistribution  of  wealth,  could  not  change  human 
nature,  but  might  change  economic  conditions.  That 
is  a  matter  not  of  men  and  women,  but  of  men,  women 
and  money. 

*This  Is  one  reason  among  many  why  a  rise  in  the 
French  birth-rate  is  not  to  be  expected.  The  others  include 
some  deeper  reasons.  The  declining  birth-rate  of  old  and 
highly  civilized  peoples  is  certainly  due  finally  not  to  arti- 
ficial and  transient,  but  to  natural  and  lasting,  causes.  I 
have  already  explained  that,  while  the  French-born  popula- 
tion is  stationary,  the  particular  French  faculty  of  assimi- 
lating foreign  settlers  must  be  taken  into  account  as  a 
set-off. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


A  GENERAL  picture  of  literary  France  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  present  century  would  prove  less  definite 
and  well  composed  than  those  that  can  be  drawn  of 
literary  France  at  many  other  periods.  Lines  would 
be  more  blurred,  there  would  be  less  massing  and  more 
dispersion  than  the  study  of  the  French  literary  mind 
has  accustomed  us  to.  This  is  not,  I  think,  an  im- 
pression due  merely  to  short  perspective.  It  really 
seems  as  if  some  strong  tendencies  stopped  or  wan- 
dered into  byways,  as  if  schools  died  suddenly  or  were 
diverted  or  went  on  by  mere  impetus,  as  if  forms  and 
ideals  of  literary  art  which  had  been  vigorous  and 
fruitful  lost  vitality.  Others  will  carry  on  the  torch, 
of  course,  after  this  pause. 

The  pause  came,  as  if  through  a  mysterious  in- 
stinct, just  before  the  Great  War,  which  suspended 
all  the  art  of  letters.  It  was  as  if  the  Muse  felt  she 
must  halt  and  wait  for  a  storm  to  pass  by.  That  past, 
the  arts  of  peace  restored,  literary  problems  will  exist 
again.  But  one  will  be  left  still  wondering  at  the 
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strange  coincidence,  a  literary  period  finishing  just 
when  a  spasm  of  deeds  and  blows  was  due. 

The  pause  at  the  beginning  of  the  century  coincided 
with  the  wane  of  Symbolism,  which  meant  a  certain 
humor  of  the  poetic  spirit,  but  it  was  not  only  the 
Symbolists  who  paused  and  stopped  to  think  out 
something  new.  The  observers  and  the  critics  of  hu- 
man things,  the  cool  artists  without  mystery  and  the 
shrewd  chroniclers,  the  novelists,  the  playwrights,  the 
moralists,  these  also,  and  not  only  the  poets,  paused. 

Poets  had  paused  to  look  back,  and  at  the  death  of 
Jean  Moreas  in  the  first  years  of  the  century  his 
"Neo-Classicism"  was  flourishing.  They  seemed  to 
have  had  enough  of  looking  for  new  rhythms  and  try- 
ing to  see  new  shades  in  the  old  things.  The  French 
"classic"  Alexandrine  line  reappeared  and  was  ham- 
mered out  again  as  adamant  as  ever.  It  had  never 
been  forgotten,  but  its  brassy  brilliancy  had  been  un- 
der a  cloud.  Metallic  thought  followed  the  metallic 
line — it  was  almost  certainly  not  the  other  way  about 
— and  Verlaine's  "De  la  nuance  encore  et  toujours" 
became  obsolete.  No  shades,  no  haze,  none  except 
neat  and  nice  shading;  clear  white  well-defined  light. 
It  was  an  evident  regression.  Jean  Moreas  (a  Greek 
but  French  by  adoption  and  in  a  sense  more  French 
than  the  French)  was  not  alone,  but  he  as  it  were 
gave  the  signal  for  the  pause  and  it  was  obeyed. 
Poets  seemed  to  be  waiting  for  it.  It  was  a  remark- 
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able  signal  to  come  after  twenty  or  thirty  years  of 
peering  behind  the  veil  and  looking  for  fresh  and 
mysterious  words  by  many  French  poets  (while  others, 
of  course,  went  on  their  clear  neat  way)  but  it  might 
perhaps  have  been  foreseen.  The  reaction  suddenly 
reinstated  Corneille.  French  poets  stopped  and  won- 
dered whether  they  had  not  gone  adrift  for  a  quarter 
of  a  century  and  whether  the  worship  of  the  beau  vers 
were  not,  after  all,  the  true  faith.  But  the  pause 
produced  no  vital  work,  and  that  proved  it  only  a 
pause.  Moreas  was  only  a  much  less  subtle  and  a  less 
mellifluous  Racine.  His  was  a  small  literary  school, 
and  the  Neo-Classics  were  a  handful.  The  Symbol- 
ists went  on  singing  softly,  just  as  the  Parnassians 
had  gone  on  imperturbably  when  the  Symbolists  be- 
gan. But  the  schools  of  mystery  in  poetry  had  found 
no  new  scholars ;  there  were  no  flourishing  schools,  or 
there  were  a  hundred.  The  only  one  that  prospered 
then  for  a  time  was  Neo-Classicism,  and  it  was  a  school 
of  reminiscence:  a  few  years  before  young  French 
poets  in  half  a  dozen  ardent  brotherhoods  were  dis- 
covering the  world. 

The  chronicler,  the  critic,  the  satirist  of  the  great 
human  comedy  had  paused  also.  The  fine  maturity  of 
realism  in  French  novel  writing  had  only  been  pro- 
longed and  had  not  developed  new  life.  After  Guy 
de  Maupassant  came  very  much  lesser  Maupassants; 
after  Anatole  France  came — Anatole  France,  and  he 
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FRANCE 

was  still  the  master.  The  lesser  Maupassants  are 
forgotten  already ;  "Notre  maitre"  Anatole  France  is 
the  same  exquisite  master,  but  he  can  have  no  school. 
The  prose  chroniclers  of  the  human  comedy  were 
scarcely  at  all  influenced  by  the  mystery-seeking  poets 
of  symbolism.  They  remained  realists  while  the  Sym- 
bolists sought  a  deeper  reality.  They  seem  to  have 
exhausted  suddenly  their  own  realism  at  the  beginning 
of  the  present  century,  at  the  same  time  that  the  poets' 
dreams  began  to  crystallize.  Anatole  France  con- 
tinued to  be  Anatole  France.  M.  Remain  Holland 
painted  an  immense  fresco,  his  own  composition 
worked  out  by  processes  not  particularly  his  own. 
M.  Paul  Bourget,  M.  Abel  Hermant,  M.  Rene  Bazin, 
M.  Marcel  Prevost,  M.  Henry  Bordeaux,  dozens  of 
others  wrote  on,  and  it  was  still  the  French  observer 
chronicling  French  life  in  the  same  French  way.  The 
life  did  not  seem  to  have  changed,  the  outlook  upon 
it  had  not  changed,  the  wit,  the  esprit,  the  satire,  the 
observation,  the  few  fine  moralizings  (a  la  Paul  Bour- 
get) the  neat  composition,  the  short  sharp  character 
studies,  the  bits  of  clear  drawn  landscape,  the  impar- 
tiality, the  realism  had  not  changed.  It  was  a  curious 
pause,  astonishing  if  one  thinks  of  the  leap  from 
French  Romanticism  to  French  Realism,  of  the  sudden 
outbreak  of  Flaubert  and  the  Madame  Bovary  revo- 
lution, of  the  sudden  emancipation  of  the  English 
novel  at  about  the  same  time,  the  end  of  the  nineteenth 
310 


FRANCE 

century,  of  the  new  fields  English  novelists  roamed 
over.  The  freer  French  stood  on  the  same  spot,  going 
over  still  the  same  ground  in  the  same  way. 

The  stage  also  stood  still.  After  Sardou,  drama- 
tists were  less  original  than  they  thought  they  were. 
Ibsen,  supposed  by  French  critics  to  have  had  great 
influence,  had  really  very  little  upon  the  French  stage. 
The  mystery  drama  of  M.  Maeterlinck  ceased  and  he 
turned  to  other  themes.  The  poetic  and  philosophic 
drama  paused  for  long  intervals,  and  M.  Fran£ois 
de  Curel,  for  instance,  a  fine  thinker  little  known  to 
the  public,  was  silent  for  ten  or  fifteen  years.  M.  Oc- 
tave Mirbeau,  the  biting  satirist,  became  silent  alto- 
gether. M.  Alfred  Capus  continued  delightfully  hu- 
man in  dozens  of  plays.  M.  Paul  Hervieu  went  on 
making  terse  tragedies  out  of  neat  but  simple  psycho- 
logical situations.  M.  Henri  Bataille  studied  senti- 
mental problems  steadily,  one  every  year.  M.  de 
Porto  Riche  studied  sentimental  problems  also,  more 
slowly,  one  every  five  or  six  years.  M.  Henry  Bern- 
stein imagined  annually  a  tremendous  stage  situation. 
But  it  all  amounted  soon  to  little  more  than  marking 
time.  The  Bernstein  play  with  the  best  built-up  cat- 
astrophe, the  Bataille  play  with  the  best-wrought 
sentimental  and  sensual  crisis,  all  at  last  turned  in  a 
circle.  The  stage  had  renewed  Sardou's  despised  tech- 
nique and  renewed  observation  to  suit  a  different  gen- 
eration of  Paris  societv — and  there  stopped.  French 
311 


FRANCE 

critics  turned  (many  have  told  me  so)  from  the  plays 
and  novels  about  the  "three-cornered  household"  to 
English  stories  for  refreshment. 


This  pause  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury followed  three  immediately  successive  phases  of 
great  vitality  that  filled  the  nineteenth  century: 
counted  backward,  Symbolism,  Realism  in  prose  and 
artifice  in  verse,  Romanticism.  It  would  be  impossible 
even  to  attempt  to  guess  at  what  French  literature 
may  have  in  store  for  the  future  without  knowledge 
at  least  of  these  three  recent  great  periods — and  they 
but  follow  naturally  centuries  preceding  that  can  not 
be  dealt  with  here.  They  correspond  with  three  great 
groups  of  tendencies  in  the  French  literary,  artistic 
and  philosophic  spirit:  eloquence  of  language,  per- 
ception of  the  picturesque,  generalization ;  intense  ob- 
servation of  reality,  intense  respect  of  form ;  sense  of 
mystery. 

The  Symbolists  were  perhaps  the  first  since  the 
people's  songs  and  stories  of  the  Middle  Ages  to  re- 
store the  sense  of  mystery  to  French  literature.  The 
realist  prose  writers  before  them  and  contemporary 
with  them  were  the  most  ruthless  observers  of  every- 
day life  known  among  modern  writers ;  the  contempo- 
rary versifiers  played  delightfully  with  meter  and 
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rhyme.  The  Romantics  looked  at  the  world  broadly 
and  carelessly,  they  saw  everything  and  saw  nothing 
accurately. 

Romanticism  brought  comparatively  new  things  to 
French  literature.  For  two  centuries  measure  and 
taste  had  been  the  literary  gods.  Exuberant  fun  in 
Moliere  broke  out  sometimes  into  fantastic  extrava- 
gances that  harked  back  to  Rabelais,  but  the  founda- 
tion was  always  very  sane  and  reasonable  humanity, 
without  a  ghost  of  unearthly  fancy.  There  were 
traces  of  attempts  to  be  more  than  human  in  Corneille 
— and  one  disrespectfully  thinks  of  the  frog  in  the 
fable  blowing  itself  out — but  the  language  remained 
always  measured  and  precise,  the  versified  line  always 
neat.  What  was  new  in  French  Romanticism  was  the 
attempt  to  revive  the  old  real  fancy  of  French  poetry 
of  the  days  before  the  Renaissance,  of  the  days  of 
Villon,  in  reaction  against  the  French  so-called 
"Classic"  spirit  dating  from  the  Renaissance,  but  to 
revive  poetry  in  a  totally  different  world  and  with 
totally  different  materials  at  hand.  The  attempt  in 
great  part  failed,  probably  because  it  was  too  deliber- 
ate and  conscious. 

Eloquence,  mere  eloquence,  is  natural  to  Latin 
races,  and  the  French  are  in  part  Latin.  But  the 
love  of  sounding  words  for  the  words'  sake  is  perhaps 
not  naturally  French.  Would  Victor  Hugo  have 
written  what  bombast  he  did  write  if  he  had  not  been 
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consciously  and  deliberately  leading  a  fight  against 
the  dried-up  spirit  of  the  eighteenth  century  from 
which  any  breath  of  poetry  had  flown?  Victor  Hugo 
is  sometimes  the  great,  not  the  greatest,  sometimes  the 
worst  Romanticist.  French  Romanticism  failed  fear- 
fully when  it  thought  that  Hernani,  Ruy  Bias,  Le  Roi 
s'amuse  were  of  the  same  nature  as  Hamlet  or  King 
Lear  or  The  Merchant  of  Venice — and  it  actually  did 
think  something  of  the  kind.  The  hopeless  blindness 
of  such  an  illusion  is  like  a  gap  in  the  French  intelli- 
gence. French  Romanticism  rose  high  with  the  splen- 
did picturesqueness  of  some  of  the  Legende  des  Siecles, 
the  story  of  Ruth  and  Boaz,  the  Marlage  de  Roland, 
both  superbly  Hugoesque  in  their  incomparable  gleam 
and  charm  of  purely  external  poetry.  French  Ro- 
manticism rose  highest  with  the  splendid  somberness, 
finer  and  deeper  than  Byron's  (was  it  really  any  more 
sincere?)  of  Alfred  de  Vigny. 

Yet  on  the  whole  French  Romanticism  failed.  It 
brought  much  brilliant  picturesqueness,  not  much  real 
poetry  and  none  of  the  highest,  none  equal  to  the 
highest  of  English  Romanticism,  to  Shelley  or  Keats. 
Victor  Hugo  might  be  called  a  sublime  journalist,  and 
was  actually  the  prince  of  reporters  in  Choses  vues. 
Alfred  de  Musset  has  been  called  the  poet  of  love ;  he 
is  the  delightful  and  poignant  singer  of  amours.  He 
had  only  a  poor  little  pair  of  wings,  even  in  such  a 
line  as  "Rien  ne  nous  rend  si  grand  qu'une  grande 
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FRANCE 

douleur,"  compared  with  Shelley's,  yet  who  sometimes 
found  his  feet  of  clay.  Some  of  the  greatest  prose 
came  from  French  Romanticism — Chateaubriand's — 
not  the  greatest  poetry.  French  Romanticism  was  in 
part  learned  from  English  poets,  and  failed  because  it 
was  learning  a  lesson.  It  took  the  natural  French 
bent  for  eloquence  and  tried  to  make  poetry  of  it. 

French  Realism  succeeded  Romanticism  and  pre- 
ceded Symbolism.  There  were  of  course  already  Real- 
ists contemporary  with  the  Romantics.  But  through 
Balzac,  for  instance,  always  flows  a  stream,  either 
rivulet  or  torrent,  of  romance,  that  sometimes  runs 
with  the  rush  of  poetry,  and  by  the  side  of  his  realism 
Balzac's  romance  counts  as  one  of  the  successes  of 
Romanticism.  A  tragic  spirit  is  breathed  into  the 
Pere  Gorlot  more  moving  than  mere  observation,  which 
is  there  also.  La  Recherche  de  I'Absolu  is  a  great 
poem.  French  Realism  was  reaction  against  Roman- 
ticism, not  at  all  along  any  road  to  poetry.  Flaubert, 
whom  one  may  call  the  leader,  put  hardly  an  atom  of 
poetry  into  his  writings,  though  he  seems  to  have  had 
a  good  deal  of  it  dimly  in  him.  Madame  Bovary,  Bou- 
vard  et  Pecuchet,  UEducation  sentimentale  are  won- 
derful realism,  but  are  not  poetry ;  even  Salammbo 
and  the  Tentation  de  Saint  Antoine,  in  which  a  poet 
might  have  rioted  to  his  heart's  content,  are  wonderful 
art  of  words  but  are  not  poetry.  This  French  Real- 
ism was  peculiarly  French.  Symbolism,  which  came 
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after  and  that  restored  the  sense  of  mystery  to  French 
poetry,  may  be  called  comparatively  foreign  to  the 
French  literary  spirit,  certainly  foreign  to  it  as  it  had 
been  formed  since  the  French  Renaissance.  Realism 
came  naturally  not  only  to  the  French  literary  spirit 
but  to  the  French  character  in  general.  In  this  dry, 
keen,  abominably  keen,  hard  outlook  upon  life,  with 
its  wit  and  cruel  sarcasm,  without  indulgence,  without 
a  shadow  of  sentimentality  and  with  hardly  an  ounce 
of  pity,  one  may  trace,  refined  and  exalted,  the  little 
French  bourgeois'  own  view  of  his  own  little  life.  A 
supreme  artist  like  Maupassant,  the  ruthless  Realist, 
makes  great  art  out  of  that  little  view.  Zola,  having 
learned  at  the  Realist  school  (he  renamed  it  "Natural- 
ist"), reverted,  of  course,  to  Romanticism,  and  when 
he  piled  Pelion  on  Ossa  of  gross  detail  his  impulse 
was  toward  not  realism  at  all,  but  a  rough  and  loose 
picturesqueness,  with  a  vaguely  moralizing  and  even 
puritanical  purpose  behind  it.  Even  his  realism  was 
never  got  at  first  hand.  His  own  life  was  the  simplest 
in  the  world*  and  I  may  tell  this  unknown  anecdote. 
Zola,  beginning  to  write  Nana,  the  story  of  a  French 
prostitute,  knew  nothing  of  the  world  of  Nana.  It 

*With  one  complication  which,  had  its  nai've  and  noble 
side.  He  longed  to  have  children.  Madame  Zola  bore  none. 
He  took  a  mistress,  a  seamstress,  who  bore  him  two.  He 
told  his  wife  and  she  approved  him.  At  his  death  his 
widow  took  legal  steps  to  give  his  illegitimate  children  the 
surname  of  Emile-Zola. 

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FRANCE 

was  an  elderly  friend  of  mine,  who  is  now  dead  and 
who  was  an  old  friend  of  Zola,  that  introduced  Zola 
to  Nana.  Zola  was  as  innocent  as  the  day  of  Nana's 
world  and  of  the  many  other  lower  worlds  he  wrote 
about.  Any  one  who  shrinks  from  realism  must  fear 
Maupassant  infinitely  more  than  Zola. 

By  the  side  of  the  prose  Realists  was  a  generation 
of  fanciful  versifiers.  They  also  made  a  reaction 
against  Romanticism,  but  merely  against  its  slipshod 
form,  not  toward  more  real  poetry.  From  Theodore 
de  Banville  to  Jose  Maria  de  Heredia,*  the  genera- 
tion, which  included  the  Parnassians  but  began 
earlier  than  they,  amused  itself  with  nice  verse- 
making,  while  the  prose  writers  were  trying  to  photo- 
graph things  without  any  touching  up.  The  cult  of 
form  is  also  a  French  trait  and  it  was  brought  high. 
English  literature  for  one  has  seldom  aimed  at  such 
perfection  of  workmanship,  and  there  are  a  hundred 
French  sonnets  of  the  period,  by  Heredia  and  a  dozen 
others,  to  set  for  mere  handicraft  against  perhaps  a 
score  in  all  English  literature.  Against  workman- 
ship is  set  the  poetic  spirit  which  that  French  gen- 
eration had  not  and  which  can  not  be  learned.  All  the 
same,  it  does  even  real  poets  no  harm  to  study  form. 

*  Josephin  Soulary,  Felix  Arvers — some  of  Frangois  Cop- 
pee,  Catulle  Mendes,  Emile  Bergerat,  Edmond  Rostand 
may  also  be  read  by  those  who  wish  to  study  a  representa- 
tive period  of  French  verse-making,  perfect  verse-making 
and  little  poetry. 

317 


FRANCE 

m 

What  is  called  for  convenience'  sake  Symbolism 
came  and  brought  a  new,  or  a  very  old  thing.  The 
last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  one  of  the 
most  important  periods  in  the  history  of  French  litera- 
ture. It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  French  poetry 
then  rediscovered  itself  and  found  a  new  birth.  The 
Romantics  in  poetry  had  finally  failed,  the  Parnas- 
sians had  succeeded  supremely  in  verse-making,  not 
in  poetry.  The  Symbolists  are  called  by  a  misleading 
name  for  want  of  a  better  one.  The  greatest  among 
them  merely  were — poets.  Their  "movement"  began 
before  the  word  Symbolism  was  heard  of:  Baudelaire, 
contemporary  with  the  prose  Realists  and  the  delight- 
ful verse-makers,  would  have  called  himself  a  Sym- 
bolist if  he  had  happened  to  think  of  the  word.  All 
that  their  Symbolism  consisted  of  was  restoring  the 
sense  of  mystery  to  French  verse.  That  was  all  it 
was,  but  it  changed  French  literature.  It  recreated 
French  poetry.  Absurd  things  have  been  written 
about  Symbolism,  chiefly  due  to  the  actual  absurd 
name,  and  more  absurd  things  have  been  written 
around  more  absurd  names  still,  like  Decadentism. 
The  so-called  Symbolists  (they  often  called  them- 
selves so,  I  admit)  merely  thought  that  real  poetry 
must  reach  to  something  beyond  things,  symbols  of 
things,  if  you  will,  to  the  "ends  of  being  and  eternal 

318 


FRANCE 

grace"  if  you  could.  They  for  the  first  time  for  cen- 
turies widened  the  horizon  of  French  verse,  the}7  dis- 
covered— rediscovered  (to  quote  for  the  millionth 
time  words  that  can  never  be  hackneyed)  those  "magic 
casements  opening  on  foam  of  perilous  seas  in  fair}' 
lands  forlorn,"  which  the  Romantics  so  seldom  saw. 

Sj^mbolism  was  a  breaking  up  of  rigid  and  pre- 
cise forms  and  thoughts  long  crystallized  in  French 
literature.  The  vers  libre  was  an  obvious  rupture  of 
old  forms.  But  there  was  a  deeper  meaning  in  the 
vers  libre  than  a  mere  breaking  away  from  old  fixed 
laws  of  versification.  There  was  a  parallel  dissolving 
and  freeing,  a  rubbing  out  of  neat  outlines  and  pre- 
cise categories,  in  form  and  in  thought.  Verlaine's  fa- 
mous Art  poetique*  albeit  still  regular  in  form,  is  the 

*  "De  la  musique  avant  toute  chose, 
Et  pour  cela  prefere  I'impair 
Plus  vague  et  plus  soluble  dans  Tair, 
Sans  rien  en  lui  qui  pcse  ou  qui  pose. 

"II  faut  aussi  que  tu  n'ailles  point 

Choisir  tes  mots  sans  quelque  meprise: 
Rien  de  plus  cher  que  la  chanson  grise 

Oe  I'inducis  au  precis  se  joint. 

"Car  nous  voulons  la  Nuance  encor, 
Pas  la  Couleur,  rien  que  la  Nuance. 


"De  la  musique  encore  et  toujours, 
Que  ton  vers  soit  la  chose  envolee 
Qu'on  sent  qui  fuit  d'une  ame  en  allee 

Vers  d'autres  deux  a  d'autres  amours. 

"Que  ton  vers  soit  la  "bonne  aventure 
Sparse  au  vent  crispe  du  matin 
Qui  va  fleurant  la  menthe  et  le  thym 

Et  tout  le  reste  est  Iitt6rature" 

319 


FRANCE 

more  astonishing  because  it  so  perfectly  conveys  what 
was  then  the  new  or  renewed  French  weariness  of  the 
old  hard  blunt  jejune  fixity  and  precision  and  a  de- 
sire for  richer  realms  of  dreams  and  subtle  half  lights 
and  fluid  fancies,  la  chanson  grise,  la  Nuance,  the 
"winged  thing"  that  flies  off  to  other  worlds  than  this 
— and  all  else  is  mere  literature.  Other  ages  of 
French  poetry  had  not  called  for  wings  to  fly  to 
other  worlds  than  this.  It  would,  of  course,  be  a 
grotesque  mistake  to  set  down  Verlaine  as  a  deca- 
dent and  to  class  him  otherwise  than  as  one  of  the 
greatest  French  poets.  He  was  the  more  extraordi- 
nary because  he  scarcely  began  the  break-up  of  the 
rigid  French  verse  yet  already  expressed  the  flux  of 
French  poetic  thought.  The  change  was  a  parallel 
one.  There  is  no  mere  superficial  difference,  for  in- 
stance, between  the  adamant  technique  of  Heredia  and 
the  fluid  vague  verse  of  Henri  de  Regnier,  in  his 
younger  days  as  a  Symbolist  poet.  The  difference 
also  is  between  Regnier  trying  to  seize  the  fleeting 
shadow  of  a  dream  and  Heredia  making  poetry  only 
of  precise  ideas.  The  latter  is  a  very  different  en- 
terprise, never  the  highest.  The  strict  Alexandrine 
verse — including  also  the  so-called  free  versification 
of  La  Fontaine,  really  just  as  rigid — corresponds  with 
a  strictly  human  choice  of  poetic  matter,  and  a  choice 
among  strictly  human  subjects  confined  to  those 
320 


FRANCE 

thoughts  that  can  be,  in  Cartesian  language,  clearly 
and  precisely  defined. 

Not  one  attempt  was  made  after  the  Renaissance 
to  change  the  laws  of  French  versification  until  the 
Symbolists  tried  the  vers  libre.  These  laws  may  be 
summed  up  thus:  every  line  measured  by  its  number 
of  syllables ;  each  syllable  to  count  alike,  including 
mute  e's  when  elided  (elision  always  occurring  be- 
tween terminal  mute  e  and  initial  vowel)  or  at  the  end 
of  a  line;  no  hiatus  of  terminal  vowel  followed  by 
initial  vowel  allowed ;  rhyming  compulsory,  and  alter- 
nating of  "feminine"  (ending  in  mute  e)  with  "mas- 
culine" rhymes  (ending  by  any  other  letter)  also 
compulsory.  For  the  Alexandrine  line  the  particular 
rules  are:  each  line  to  consist  of  two  halves  of  six 
s}rllables  each,  the  cesura  occurring  compulsorily  be- 
tween the  two  hemistichs  and  never  after  a  mute  e 
unless  elided,  lines  rhyming  compulsorily  in  succes- 
sive couples  and  feminine  and  masculine  couples  of 
rhymes  alternating.  The  French  Alexandrine  line  is 
rigid,  yet  not  so  hopelessly  rigid  as  it  might  seem. 
The  fiction  by  which  a  mute  e  is  counted  as  a  full 
syllable  allows  elasticity.  In  French  speech  the  mute  e, 
when  pronounced  at  all,  is  equal  in  quantity  to  about 
a  quarter  of  any  other  syllable.  The  two  lines  "Puis- 
que Vaube  grandit,  puisque  void  I'aurore,  Puisque 
apres  m'avoir  fui  longtemps  Vespoir  veut  bien"  .  .  . 
321 


FRANCE 

(Verlaine)  are  counted  as  being  of  exactly  the  same 
measure,  though  the  former  line,  having  three  mute 
e*s  must  be  spoken  in  much  less  time  than  the  second, 
which  has  none  (the  e  of  Puisque  apres  is  of  course 
elided.)*  Another  element,  unmentioned  in  any  French 
prosody,  is  the  tonic  stress,  generally  on  the  final 
syllable  when  not  a  mute  e.  The  commonplace  Alex- 
andrine line  has  four  stresses,  resembling  an  anapest 
line  of  four  feet  in  English  prosody.  But  the  stress 
can  be  varied  greatly,  and  more  than  in  English 
prosody,  which  is  based  on  stress,  whereas  the  French 
is  not :  some  French  Alexandrine  lines  even  may  count 
only  two  stresses.  I  must  add  that  the  whole  question 
of  any  stress  in  French  verse  at  all  is  under  contro- 
versy. But  it  seems  certain  that  the  masters  of  the 
Alexandrine  line  like  Racine  consciously  employed 
the  stress  as  well  as  the  mute  e  to  vary  rhythm. 

The  vers  libre,  invented  by  the  Symbolists,  is  a 
total  revolution  against  century-old  French  prosody. 
The  first  innovation,  dared  before  them,  was  the  two 
cesurse  in  the  Alexandrine  line  dividing  it  into  three 
portions  of  four  syllables,  instead  of  two  of  six.  Then 
came  no  cesura  at  all.  But  the  vers  libre  breaks  ut- 
terly away.  Hiatus  is  accepted,  assonance  replaces 
rhyme,  lines  follow  one  another  of  irregular  length, 

*  "Qu'est-ce  done?     Qu'avez-vousf—Laissez  moi,  je  nous 

prie. — 

Mais  encor  dites  moi  quelle  itizarrerie"     .     . 
the  two  opening  lines  of  Moliere's  Misanthrope,  each  are 
counted  as  being  of  twelve  full  syllables. 


FRANCE 

one  of  two  syllables  may  precede  one  of  fourteen, 
whereas  in  traditional  French  prosody  twelve  syllables 
is  the  limit  any  line  may  reach.  The  effect  to  the  ear 
is  that  of  rhythmical  prose.  A  complete  distinction 
must  be  drawn  between  the  vers  libre  and  the  so-called 
irregular  verse  of  La  Fontaine  or  that  of  Moliere  in 
Amphitryon.  The  "irregularity"  of  the  latter  verse 
consists  solely  of  the  assembling  of  lines  varying  in 
length  up  to  that  of  the  Alexandrine.  Syllables  con- 
tinue to  be  counted  in  the  orthodox  way,  rhyme  is 
compulsory  and  hiatus  forbidden.  The  flaw  of  the 
vers  libre  is  that  it  has  never  been  and  doubtless  can 
not  be  even  broadly  codified.  One  poet — like  Ver- 
haeren — sings,  defying  all  rules  of  French  prosody 
and — sings.  Another  writes  vers  libres — and  proses. 
The  absence  or  rather  the  uncertainty  of  the  tonic 
accent  or  stress  in  the  French  language  is  the  obstacle 
to  a  rhythm  based  on  anj'thing  else  but  the  scansion 
of  syllables.  The  old  rules  of  French  prosody  being 
done  away  with,  the  French  poet  must  make  his  own 
music,  and  some  did,  but  some  did  not.  The  best  com- 
parison is  with  Walt  Whitman,  who  ignored  English 
prosody  and  who  when  he  wrote  verse  sometimes  made 
beautiful  music  and  sometimes  atrocious  prose.  The 
vers  libre  thus  has  its  advantages  like  Walt  Whitman's 
verse.  The  man  who  has  a  sense  of  the  music  of  words 
succeeds,  and  the  other  does  not.  But  no  proper 
prosody  of  the  vers  libre  can  or  will  be  written.  I 
323 


FRANCE 

repeat  that  the  probably  insuperable  obstacle  is  the 
uncertainty  of  the  stress  in  the  French  language, 
which  prevents  rules  of  rhythm  unless  syllables  be 
counted. 

The  vers  libre,  the  great  upheaval  of  French  pros- 
ody, thus  seems  to  have  amounted  to  little  in  tech- 
nique. No  new  prosody  was  set  up,  no  new  workable 
theory  of  music  in  words  set  forth.  But  those  pre- 
cisely who  did,  breaking  the  old  laws,  make  music  of 
words  without  any  laws  save  of  their  own  fancy 
counted  the  more.  The  prosody  of  the  vers  libre  is 
and  always  will  be  in  flux :  it  imaged  well  the  thought 
of  the  Symbolists  who  aimed  at  describing  the  in- 
definite and  the  unfinished.  At  the  same  time  it  must 
be  remembered  that  one  of  the  greatest  painters  of 
la  nuance,  Verlaine,  never  wrote  entirely  "free"  verse 
and  never  broke  with  all  or  even  most  of  the  rules  of 
the  old  French  prosody. 

What  Symbolist  thought  tried  to  do  was  to  be  less 
human  than  all  French  poetry  had  been  before  it  and 
to  be  more  than  human,  to  catch  what  lies  dim  and 
vague  at  the  back  of  the  human  mind  and  may  be 
divine,  to  seize  what  clouds  of  glory  it  trails,  to  say 
not  what  the  mind  conceives  completely  but  what  it 
guesses  at,  to  show  the  light  that  never  was  on  sea 
or  land.  The  human  poetry,  and  other  French  poets 
have  been  the  greatest  human  poets,  expresses  only 
what  the  mind  conceives  completely.  The  Symbolists 
824 


FRANCE 

tried  to  express  only  what  the  mind  does  not  conceive 
completely,  only  the  fluid,  the  unending,  the  unfinished, 
intuitions  and  infinite  longings.  Bergson's  philosophy 
of  intuition  issued  in  part  from  the  poetry  of  Sym- 
bolism. Moliere  and  La  Fontaine,  among  an  innu- 
merable host  in  French  literature,  a  few  of  which 
were  their  peers,  were  perhaps  the  greatest  purely 
human  poets  any  literature  has  ever  known.  Purely 
worldly  knowledge  has  never  been  told  so  easily  and 
so  completely  as  in  the  miraculous  Alexandrine  verse 
of  L,e  Misanthrope  or  Les  Femmes  Savantes — the  nat- 
ural talk  of  men  and  women  falling  by  itself  as  it  were 
into  meter — or  the  varied  lines  of  La  Fontaine's  fables, 
worldly  wisdom  in  cool  clear  verse,  meant  for  worldly 
men  and  women  and  not  at  all  for  the  French  children 
of  six  or  seven  who  are  set  to  con  it.  In  both  writers, 
and  in  many  others,  French  literature  achieved  su- 
premely what  other  literatures  have  done  less  well :  even 
Horace  comes  near  but  not  up  to  it,  Pope  stops  a  long 
way  behind.  This  kind  of  French  masterpiece,  perhaps 
the  essential  masterpiece  of  French  verse,  is  exactly 
what  the  Symbolists  did  not  want  to  copy  or  continue ; 
in  it  there  is  no  mystery,  were  Moliere  or  La  Fon- 
taine (or  was  Horace  indeed?)  aware  of  mystery? 
The  Symbolists  thus,  almost  alone  in  French  literature 
for  several  centuries,  came  into  the  sphere  of  the  real 
English  poets — shall  we  say  the  real  poets?  Fran- 
9013  Villon  was  human  enough,  but  no  simply  human 


FRANCE 

poet  could  have  thought  of  that  refrain  which  still 
haunts  the  world  (the  very  small  world  that  reads 
poetry  or  cares  a  jot  about  it)  "Mais  ou  sont  les 
neiges  d'antan?"  Symbolism  (I  still,  of  course,  mean 
all  the  poets  from  Baudelaire  downward  who  may  be 
loosely  grouped  under  the  name)  thus  stretched  hands 
across  three  centuries  to  a  French  poetry  which  the 
Renaissance  and  French  "classicism"  strangled,  doing 
greater  things  afterward  themselves,  but  while  greater 
in  execution,  not  so  high  in  intention.  It  is  impossible 
here  to  do  more  than  give  a  list  of  names  and  an  in- 
complete list:  Baudelaire,  truculent,  sharp,  yet  mys- 
terious; Verlaine,  poet  in  a  hundred  moods,  the  poet 
of  exquisite  allusion;*  Mallarme  who  told  in  precise 
words  the  vaguest  dreams,  sometimes  still  unde- 
ciphered  riddles  ;f  Arthur  Rimbaud,  all  fantastic  un- 
earthly suggestion;  Jules  Laforgue,  sardonic  but 
mysterious;  F.  Viele-Griffin  and  Stuart  Merrill,  the 
Gallicized  Americans,  minor  singers  with  a  dreamy 
charm ;  Gustave  Kahn,  who  wrote  the  best  treatise  on 
the  vers  libre;  Charles  Van  Lerberghe,  an  extraordi- 
nary dreamer;  Maurice  Maeterlinck,  a  prose  poet  of 

*  The  poet,  for  instance,  of  that  Impression  fausse  which 
Is  so  delicately  true. 

t  Besides   what   is   mentioned   in   the   chapter   on   "Men 
Who  Made  Modern  France,"  read,  for  instance,  H£rodiade, 
a  perfect  piece  of  profound  poetic  suggestion,  or  the  poem 
dedicated  to  his  daughter  fanning  herself: 
"O  rgveuse,  pour  que  je  plonge 

Au  pur  dtilice  sans  chemin, 
Sache  par  un  subtil  mensonge 
Garder  mon  aile  dans  ta  main" 

326 


FRANCE 

mystery  in  his  earlier  plays;  Francis  Jammes,  the 
poet  of  the  old  French  soil  and  the  most  truly  Chris- 
tian poet  of  his  day;  Paul  Fort,  who  invented  a  new 
form  of  ballad,  prose  and  verse  merging  into  each 
other  subtly,  and  who  is  at  once  homely  and  mystic; 
Emile  Verhaeren,  probably  the  greatest  of  these,  a 
very  human  poet,  but  whose  high-brooding  human 
epics  never  forget  the  mystery  of  human  things  and 
while  painting  in  broad  frescoes  the  world  that  passes, 
reach  restlessly  beyond  it. 

The  so-called  Symbolists  did  not  fulfil  all  the  prom- 
ise they  gave.  The  output  was  large  and  the  above 
list  of  names  might  be  three  or  four  times  as  long. 
The  outstanding  names  in  French  literature  were 
fewer  than  some  other  periods  have  bequeathed.  Per- 
haps poetry  that  has  mystery  in  it  is  not  natural  to 
the  French  literary  spirit.  But  "symbolism"  was  all 
the  greater  event  in  French  literature ;  it  was  a  great 
event  also  in  European  literature.  One  must  remem- 
ber that  it  ruled  European  literature  for  some  years. 
For  the  first  time  since  before  the  Renaissance  French 
literature  had  shown  other  literatures  the  poetic  way ; 
it  had  often  almost  constantly  shown  the  way  of  liter- 
ary taste,  balance,  human  sense  and  artistic  judg- 
ment, it  had  never  pointed  the  road  to  the  stars  as 
English  poetry  did  in  Shelley's  day.  French  Sym- 
bolism of  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  com- 
parable, though  less  in  achievement,  with  the  English 
327 


FRANCE 

"Romantic  movement"  of  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

IV 

What  will  follow  the  pause  which  occurred  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  ?  One  may  speak 
negatively  with  some  assurance,  affirmatively  only 
with  reservations.  Symbolism  seems  to  have  died,  and 
with  it  the  mystic  sense.  There  is  no  sign  of  a  Ro- 
mantic revival.  The  old  perfect  Realism  continues 
only  in  imitators.  There  are  survivals,  of  course, 
from  many  schools.  Edmond  Rostand  from  that  of 
sometimes  delightful,  sometimes  boring  acrobatics  in 
verse,  dating  back  to  the  middle-century  versifiers; 
the  great  old  Emile  Verhaeren,  last  of  mystic  French 
poets;  many  Realists,  some  Neo-Classics  repeating 
Jean  Moreas.  But  really  the  literary  schools  that 
flourished  with  extraordinary  vigor  at  the  end  of  the 
nineteenth  century  died  with  the  century.  The  young 
men,  whom  it  behooves  to  start  schools,  are  groping 
their  way.  They  start  a  dozen  different  schools  that 
are  shut  up  in  a  day.  The  conflicting  impulses  of 
the  times  prey  upon  them.  There  is  no  such  sweeping 
"movement"  as  that  which  carried  off  French  poetry 
in  search  of  mystery,  on  a  passionate  if  not  always 
profitable  quest. 

No  one  "literary  movement"  can  be  predicted  now 
for  French  literature.  In  a  confusion  of  purposes, 
328 


The  seven  bridges  from  the  top  of  Notre  Dame 


FRANCE 

where  the  old  realism  jostles  neat  verse-making  and 
mysticism  persists  still  by  the  side  of  dry  Neo-Classic- 
ism,  but  all  apparently  moribund,  the  critic  can  ten- 
tatively discern  two  perhaps  clearest  tendencies.  The 
one  comes  from  the  revival  of  orthodox  and  tradi- 
tional Roman  Catholicism,  the  return  to  formal  faith 
and  to  religious  and  political  obedience;  the  other 
comes  from  a  raw  and  still  vague  religion  of  democ- 
racy that  may  produce  greater  things.  The  revival 
of  orthodox  Roman  Catholicism,  dealt  with  elsewhere 
and  corresponding  with  political  revivals  in  the  new 
generation,  has  so  far  produced  no  literature  worth 
mentioning:  it  abides  by  those  Symbolists  who  were 
devout  Christians,  like  Francis  Jammes,*  and  who 
believed  and  sang  before  any  political  Church  re- 
vival. 

The  tentative  new  poetry  of  democracy  is  very  ten- 
tative still ;  it  has  done  nothing  of  note  yet,  but  it  may 
lead  somewhere.  The  one  new  French  literary  idea 
in  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  was  an  at- 
tempt to  reflect  in  poetry  what  some  think  to  be  a 
new  social  aspect.  They  who  think  so  have  discovered 
men  in  the  mass  and  washed  their  hands  of  individual 
man.  This  may  or  may  not  be  a  new  social  aspect. 
It  is  legitimate  poetic  matter,  if  you  can  make  the 
poetry  out  of  it.  Walt  Whitman  sang  democracy 


*  Paul  Claudel,  chiefly  a  playwright,  is  also  a  leading 
Neo-Catholic. 

329 


FRANCE 

and  after  him  Emile  Verhaeren  sang  cities  and  crowds 
and  men  bent  over  the  soil.  But  both  sang  and  looked 
from  the  one  man's  point  of  view.  It  may  be  possible 
to  write  a  new  epic  of  democracy  from  the  crowd's 
point  of  view,  to  be  not  the  singer  watching  the  crowd, 
but  the  crowd  itself  singing,  to  make  poetry  out  of 
ordinary  men's  doings  not  from  without  but  from 
within  them,  to  be  a  renewed  Greek  Chorus.  That  is 
the  new  attempt  young  French  literature  made  at  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  century.  The  purpose 
can  be  imagined:  to  abolish  not  only  the  poet's  per- 
sonality but  the  hero's  personality,  to  be  as  imper- 
sonal as  the  things  that  look  on  at  human  doings,  to 
make  poetry  out  of  that  very  attitude,  impersonal  and 
universal,  the  contrary  of  the  lyric  reading  that  makes 
poetry  out  of  what  the  poet  feels ;  to  be  more  uni- 
versal also  than  epic  or  dramatic  poets  who  have  their 
heroes  for  their  spokesmen,  or  narrate  but  always 
from  some  watcher's  point  of  view;  to  sink  all  per- 
sonality not  only  of  the  poet  but  of  any  creatures  of 
the  poet.  Those  who  hold  that  democracy  is  a  new 
force  in  which  men  individually  will  not  count  and  in 
which  there  will  no  longer  be  any  representative  men 
will  jump  at  such  a  poetic  theory.  The  practise  is 
another  thing.  Can  the  poet  be  absolutely  imper- 
sonal ?  But  more  is  asked  of  him.  Can  he  be  imper- 
sonal otherwise  than  by  creating  other  persons  and 
identifying  himself  with  them,  as  Shakespeare  did? 
330 


FRANCE 

Will  there  be  a  poetry  in  the  future  of  crowds,  not  of 
men ;  a  poetry  so  general  that  it  will  sing  only  of  what 
millions  of  men  assembled  feel,  a  poetry  of  the  men, 
not  even  the  man,  in  the  street? 

This  is  the  only  new  thing  toward  which  French 
literature  seemed  to  tend  at  the  beginning  of  the  twen- 
tieth century.  Jules  Remains  and  George  Duhamel, 
among  others,  showed  the  way,  with  plays,  novels  and 
poems,*  but  were  far  then  from  the  goal.  The  im- 
mediate future  of  French  literature  belongs  either  to 
the  Roman  Catholic  Revival  or  to  this  new  poetry  of 
Democracy,  or  to  both. 

*  The  plays,  endeavoring  to  express  a  collective  voice, 
that  of  an  army,  for  instance,  remain  raw,  and  the  simple 
Greek  tragic  chorus  is  more  expressive  in  the  same  way. 
The  poems  show  more  promise,  and  strike  the  impersonal 
note  well,  but  without  much  music,  a  bad  sign.  The  novels 
include  Mart  de  quelqu'un,  the  tale  of  all  that  happens 
round  the  "death  of  Somebody,"  whom  nobody  knows,  faith- 
fully carried  out  for  Impersonalism,  but  it  must  be  con- 
fessed, tiresome. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

MEN  WHO  MADE  MODERN  FRANCE 


NOT  all  the  men  who  made  modern  France.  To 
find  them  all  would  be  an  historian's  and  an  ethnolo- 
gist's task  working  back  through  centuries.  But  the 
latest  men,  through  whom  France  is  what  she  is  to-day. 
Is  it  possible  to  trace  the  French  national  character 
with  its  unity  and  variations  in  these  creative  and  rep- 
resentative Frenchman  of  one  century,  to  show  how 
French  they  were  and  in  what  they  were  French — 
these  statesmen,  public  men,  writers,  poets,  artists  in 
words,  thinkers  in  words,  philosophers,  critics,  artists 
in  color  and  form,  finders  in  science?  I  have  tried  to 
do  so. 

The  most  representative  French  social  builder  in 
the  nineteenth  century  was  not  a  Frenchman.  It 
remains  one  of  the  curiosities  of  history  that  Napoleon 
did  express  unmistakably  and  supremely  a  great  part 
of  the  French  spirit.  What  is  naturally  warlike  and 
dashing  in  the  French  character  any  so  great  a  sol- 
dier might  have  as  well  brought  out;  no  mere  soldier 
could  have  built,  and  no  French-born  statesman  has 
332 


FRANCE 

since  built,  as  suitably  for  a  great  part  of  the  French 
people.  The  French  passion  for  unity  and  order  has 
never  been  satisfied  in  the  arrangements  of  national 
life  so  completely  as  by  Napoleon.  He  stands  out  as 
the  foremost  modern  French  statesman.  He  seems  to 
have  guessed  for  good  and  for  ill  (it  certainly  was 
both  for  France)  that  he  could  give  what  a  great  part 
of  the  French  spirit  wanted ;  by  instinct  that  part  of 
France  opened  its  arms  to  him.  Not  only  the  na- 
tional passion  for  unity  and  order  remains  to-day,  but 
the  hankering  desire  for  a  master  even  still  lurks. 
Talleyrand  by  comparison  is  judged  an  international 
not  a  French  statesman.  Guizot  said  "Enrichissez- 
vous"  and  is  unjustly  remembered  by  little  else.  He 
represented  the  great  French  bourgeoisie,  whose  great 
day  was  his,  whose  silent  power  is  still  great,  but 
whose  fate  may  be  to  be  crushed  between  autocracy 
and  demagogy. 

Thiers,  tiny  Thiers,  who  stood  up  great-heartedly 
to  Bismarck  in  those  fighting  arguments,  tragic  for 
France,  over  peace  terms  in  1871,  was  the  solid  French 
bourgeoisie  also,  as  sturdy  as  it  and  as  limited  as  it. 
The  men  of  the  Commune — Blanqui,  Jules  Valles, 
Felix  Pyat,  Delescluze — were  another  France,  the 
France  of  wild  political  poetry,  the  France  that  has 
put  more  fancy — fierce  fancy — into  French  political 
life  than  into  French  life  and  even  into  French  poetry. 
They  did  not  show  the  same  French  trait  as  did  the 
333 


FRANCE 

tnen  of  1848  who,  on  the  contrary,  for  all  their  politi- 
cal dreams,  were  logicians  after  the  old  traditions  of 
French  reason.  After  1848,  Napoleon  III  never  was 
a  representative  French  statesman  but  an  accident,  a 
lucky,  then  a  pathetic  and  tragic  accident,  pathetic 
in  himself  and  tragic  for  France.  After  1871,  Gam- 
betta,  of  Italian  descent,  did  represent  France:  the 
France  of  Southern  eloquence,  just  chastened  by  the 
North,  the  France  that  one  right  phrase  will  carry 
along.  He  was  the  orator  and  the  real  spokesman; 
he  had  the  rhetoric,  and  he  knew  the  straight  word 
which  is  not  only  rhetoric.  He  built  nothing  and  is 
and  will  be  remembered  only  for  a  few  straight  words 
he  said.  Fine  words  appeal  to  French  taste  always, 
the  right  word  in  the  right  place  appeals  to  French 
taste  and  to  French  reason,  which  is  much  akin.* 
Jules  Ferry,  able,  honest  and  dull,  much  misjudged 
in  his  lifetime,  was  the  intelligent,  but  rather  sur- 
prised, and  rather  short-sighted  leader  for  a  time  of 
a  renewed  France,  seeking  compensation  for  the  1871 
catastrophe  in  far  Eastern  colonial  enterprise,  the  con- 

*  Gambetta  to-day  means  four  phrases.  On  the  recon- 
quest  of  Alsace-Lorraine:  "Pensons  y  toujours,  n'en  parlons 
jamais;"  on  the  everlasting  struggle  between  the  church  of 
Rome  and  the  Republic:  "Le  clericalisme,  voila  Tennemi" 
and  "Uanticlericalisme  n'est  pas  un  article  d' exportation," 
both  of  which  are  admirable  lightning  summaries  of  com- 
plex political  questions;  on  patriotism:  "Franc,ais  .  . 
il  depend  encore  de  vous  de  montrer  a  Tunivcrs  ce  qu'est  un 
grand  peuple  qui  ne  veut  pas  perlr"  (1870),  inscribed  on 
the  pedestal  of  his  bad  monument  in  the  Tuileries,  claptrap 
and  insincere  as  his  own  eloquence  never  was. 

334 


FRANCE 

queror  of  1871  being  nothing  loath.  General  Bou- 
langer,  a  sentimental  bagman  himself,  was  for  five 
minutes  the  France  in  which  ever  lurks  the  passion 
to  be  mastered  that  Napoleon  alone  satisfied. 

Of  French  public  men  under  the  Third  Republic 
after  Gambetta  and  down  to  the  Great  War,  Georges 
Clemenceau  will  be  longest  remembered.  He  was 
thought  to  build  nothing  and  he  built  little,  but  he 
had  a  quality  of  mind  above  his  fellows.  Waldeck- 
Rousseau  was  the  excellent,  cold,  keen  lawyer,  with 
authority  enough  to  take  the  helm  in  a  storm,  and  to 
pull  France  through  the  Dreyfus  Case.*  Henri  Bris- 
son  was  the  incorruptible  of  the  first  French  Revo- 
lution translated  into  modern  and  less  dramatic  terms, 
into  a  very  simple  gentleman  with  one  idea,  Anti-Cleri- 
calism, and  a  man  of  whose  honesty  in  public  or  pri- 
vate life  his  enemies  never  even  jokingly  doubted. 
Emile  Combes  was  a  dry,  narrow,  little  fanatic,  taught 
bigotry  by  early  education  in  priests'  schools  and 
rounding  with  the  same  bigotry  upon  priests  and  re- 
ligion in  after  political  life ;  the  name  "Combism" 
remained.  Leon  Bourgeois  was  the  academic  Radical 
doctrinaire  and  also  the  academic  and  dignified  states- 
man who  represented  France  at  the  Peace  Congresses 

*  Under  his  administration  of  1899-1902  the  Dreyfus  Case 
passed  from  a  virulent  national  quarrel  into  judicial  peace. 
Under  the  same  administration  freedom  of  association  was 
for  the  first  time  since  the  first  Revolution  granted  by 
law,  but  simultaneously  religious  associations,  hitherto  fa- 
vored by  custom  at  the  expense  of  other  forms  of  associa- 
tion, were  attacked. 

335 


FRANCE 

of  the  Hague;  Raymond  Poincare  was  the  lawyer 
whom  the  gift  of  neat,  easy  and  polished  eloquence 
raised  to  the  figurehead  of  the  State ;  Aristide  Briand 
was  the  early  Revolutionist  who  through  a  subtle  and 
supple  mind  and  incomparable  forensic  gifts  of  intel- 
ligence and  voice  became  a  leader  of  conservative  anti- 
revolutionary  Republicanism. 

Georges  Clemenceau,  who  most  of  his  life  destroyed 
and  never  built  but  one  thing,*  was  the  most  repre- 
sentative man  of  them  all.  He  had  some  of  the  best 
French  intellectual  qualities  and  one  talent  that  is  not 
particularly  French — the  humor  that  turns  round  and 
looks  sardonically  upon  itself.  He  saw  his  own  coun- 
try more  clearly  than  any  of  his  contemporaries  and 
told  it  more  bluntly  than  any  one  else  durst  that  it 
still  had  to  "go  through  its  apprenticeship  of  lib- 
erty."! He  saw  the  perils  for  his  country  at  both 
poles,  the  tyranny  of  some  kind  of  State  Socialism  at 
the  one  and  the  despotism  of  some  one  master  at  the 
other.  He  saw  well,  and  what  he  saw  he  said  with  a 
sharp,  neat,  deep  irony  that  proved  him  of  the  race 
of  Voltaire,  who  expressed  one  side  of  the  French 
character  as  it  perhaps  may  never  be  expressed  again. 
Georges  Clemenceau  (who  in  his  politics  often  went 

*  At  Casablanca  in  1909,  when  as  French  Prime  Minister 
he  replied,  over  a  Franco-German  affray  in  Morocco,  suc- 
cessfully to  Germany  as  Germany  had  never  been  spoken 
to  since  the  modern  German  Empire  was  founded. 

t  In  a  famous  speech  during  a  coal  miners'  strike,  Georges 
Clemenceau  being  then  Homo  Secretary  (1906). 

336 


FRANCE 

astray,  especially  for  instance  when  he  persisted  ab- 
surdly in  speaking  of  Raymond  Poincare  like  a  Bru- 
tus speaking  of  an  ambitious  Caesar)  when  he  went 
right  spoke  for  France  and  in  the  real  old  French 
tongue,  and  in  1909  spoke  to  Germany  as  neither 
France  nor  any  other  nation  had  spoken  to  her  since 
1871.  Georges  Clemenceau  came  to  power,  as  Vol- 
taire might  have  come  to  power,  after  some  thirty 
years  of  Cabinet-smashing.  He  at  last — Mayor  of 
Montmartre  under  the  Commune  and  upsetter  of  Gov- 
ernments ever  after  that — was  Prime  Minister,  and 
Carlyle  would  have  said  that  he  now  must  show 
whether  he  had  a  hammer  for  building.  In  office  he 
was  the  same  biting  Voltairean,  he  gibed  at  the  prin- 
ciples he  had  defended  out  of  office ;  but  he  built  some- 
thing, and  that  was  well  built  for  France.  He  was  a 
representative  Frenchman.  A  famous  Parliamentary 
debate,  representative  of  the  best  French  political 
thought,  once  brought  Georges  Clemenceau  up 
against  Jean  Jaures.*  The  leader  of  the  Parlia- 
mentary Socialist  party,  by  dual  nature  a  philosopher 
and  a  practical  politician,  the  chief  of  a  doctrinaire 
party  that  told  its  chief  every  five  minutes  what  to  do, 
announced  he  would  speak  upon  the  City  of  the  Fu- 
ture. Georges  Clemenceau  sprang  to  the  challenge 
and  replied,  praising  the  present.  Jaures  spoke  for 

*  In  1906,  when  Georges  Clemenceau,  for  the  first  time  a 
Cabinet  Minister,  was  Home  Secretary,  in  the  Cabinet  of 
M.  Sarrien,  whom  he  succeeded  as  Prime  Minister. 

337 


FRANCE 

a  day  or  two  of  Socialism;  Clemenceau  for  a  few 
hours  of  Individualism.  The  eloquence  of  the  one 
was  gorgeous,  the  intelligence  of  the  other  damaging. 
Perhaps  no  other  modern  Parliament  is  capable  of 
holding  such  a  debate.  The  French  seldom  is  and 
seems  unfortunately  to  be  growing  less  so. 


II 


Almost  all  the  French  artists  in  words  of  verse 
and  prose  in  the  nineteenth  century  could  not  have 
been  anything  but  French.  What  foreign  influences 
were  accepted  the  French  mind  melted  down  and  re- 
cast before  it  would  look  at  them.  German  literature 
was  discovered,  first  by  Madame  de  Stael,  but  the 
particular  German  poetical  spirit  continued  to  be  held 
so  foreign  that  to  this  day  the  fairy  folklore  of  Wag- 
ner's stories,  for  instance,  is  still  more  or  less  repug- 
nant to  the  French  taste.  Victor  Hugo  wrote  the 
historic  preface  to  Cromwell,  and  ingenuously  gave 
his  whole  case  away  by  honestly  believing  that  Her- 
nani,  Ruy  Bias,  Angela,  Tyran  de  Padoue  were  plays 
in  the  manner  of  "Le  Grand  Will."  Le  Roman  russe 
was  discovered,  Ibsen  was  discovered.  But  Melchior 
de  Vogue  understood  and  expounded  the  least  Rus- 
sian side  of  Russian  literature,  and  Maurice  Maeter- 
linck, a  French  master,  akin  to  Ibsen  but  completely 
himself,  had  incomparably  more  influence  than  Ibsen. 
338 


FRANCE 

Walt  Whitman  was  discovered,  not  assimilated — how 
could  he  be?  In  the  French  literature  to-day — or 
for  that  matter  since  the  Renaissance — no  foreign  in- 
fluence has  been  nearly  as  real  as,  for  example,  that 
of  France  upon  the  English  eighteenth  century,  or 
that  of  French  symbolism  upon  the  late  English  nine- 
teenth century — the  battening  of  the  English  stage 
upon  the  French  during  the  middle  of  the  century 
being  worth  only  referring  to. 

Great-hearted  Lamartine  had  the  splendid  gift  of 
poetic  eloquence;  even  his  great  heart,  one  of  the 
noblest  that  ever  strove  for  ideals,  had  to  be  eloquent : 
a  wonderful  gift,  not  the  highest  in  poetry.  He 
"poured  forth  his  soul  abroad"  in  constantly  meas- 
ured music.  It  was  a  great,  stormy,  musical  soul, 
but  it  never  ventured  upon  a  new  rule  of  French 
prosody.  Chateaubriand,  magnificent  poet  in  prose, 
romantic  and  theatrical,  buried  on  a  rock  at  St.  Malo 
cut  off  at  high  tide  (as  his  strict  will  foresaw)  from 
the  continent,  was  as  sure  and  lucid  an  artist  of  style 
as  if  romantic  attitudes  had  been  strange  to  him. 
Alfred  de  Vigny,  haughty  and  lonely,  stood  aloof 
and  carved  lines  in  icy  marble:  "Seul  le  silence  est 
grand,  tout  le  reste  est  faiblesse."  His  carving  had 
the  French  eloquent  precision,  which  puts  an  epigram 
into  a  line  that  has  some  discreet,  subdued  music  in 
it.  Alfred  de  Musset  was  Bohemian  in  his  life  and 
Attic  in  his  words,  a  peculiarly  French  combination. 
339 


FRANCE 

Rolla  or  Namouna,  which  teach  French  schoolboys 
things,  are  models  of  versification,  and  Musset's  com- 
edies in  prose,  for  which  alone  he  is  accepted  as  a 
master  to-day,  are  masterpieces  of  French  prose. 
Stendhal,  "discovered"  half  a  century  after  his  death, 
is  French  very  differently,  French  of  the  race  of  La 
Bruyere,  generalizing,  observant,  dry,  very  sharp  and 
hard;  a  forerunner  of  the  "psychological"  novelists 
of  to-day,  generally  inferior  disciples ;  a  forerunner, 
too,  of  Balzac,  but  this  was  a  richer  and  more  spacious 
craftsman. 

One's  first  thought  is  that  the  huge  spreading  bulk 
of  Balzac's  art,  bursting  out  of  shape  on  a  hundred 
sides,  is  more  Anglo-Saxon  than  French,  nearer  to 
Fielding,  Smollett,  Dickens,  than  to  Moliere,  Vol- 
taire, Maupassant.  But  all  the  observer's  passion  in 
him  for  catalogues  of  data,  his  horror  of  pruning 
and  the  delight  with  which  he  all  but  drowns  himself 
in  details  (remember  the  pages  and  pages  of  old  cu- 
riosity lists  in  that  great  tragedy,  Le  Cousin  Pons) 
can  not  keep  him  from  devising  intellectual  forms 
for  the  matter  of  his  story.  He  not  only  takes  the 
first  formal  step  from  his  infinite  observation  of  life 
— induction;  but  takes  the  next,  and  argues  down 
from  his  human  laws  by  deduction — or  thinks  he  does. 
He  does  not  seem  to  have  been  naturally  drawn  to 
abstractions  and  the  processes  of  reasoning.  It  is 
easy,  almost  necessary,  to  suppose  that  had  he  thought 
340 


FRANCE 

and  written  in  English  with  the  English  spirit,  not 
in  French  with  the  French,  he  would  no  more  have 
troubled  himself  with  generalization  than  Fielding, 
would  no  more  have  been  concerned  with  abstract  types 
than  Dickens.  By  temperament  he  would  have  been 
just  as  happy  writing.  But  his  mind  was  made  by 
the  nation  of  Moliere. 

George  Sand,  as  stormy  in  her  life  as  Musset,  was 
not  the  master  of  style  that  he  was,  but  is  remem- 
bered, if  at  all,  as  a  real  painter  of  French  country 
life,  for  all  her  tremendous  romanticism.  Beranger 
is  neat  French  pedestrian  naughty  wit,  and  very  neat. 
Victor  Hugo  is  all  the  eloquence  of  all  the  French 
people  since  it  began,  all  poured  into  one  stupendous 
torrent.  No  mystery  about  it,  none  of  the  shyer  and 
tenderer  qualities  of  the  French  spirit  in  it,  in  fact 
little  real  poetry  in  it,  but  more  brute  power  of  imag- 
ination, more  overwhelming  mastery  of  words  than 
any  other  artist  in  words  ever  had.  The  eloquence, 
the  antithesis,  the  wild  picturesqueness,  the  drama 
and  the  melodrama,  the  sublime  ease  of  all  this  word- 
juggling,  the  vitality  and  the  fury,  yet  with  always 
something  cold  running  below  the  finest  frenzy — by 
them  Victor  Hugo  expressed  a  great  part  of  his  peo- 
ple's spirit,  but  not  all. 

"Prends  I'eloquence  et  fords  lul  le  cou,"  said  Ver- 
laine:  Verlaine  has  been  called  un-French;  he  has  not 
even  now  been  ranked  by  French  critics,  to  my  mind, 
341 


FRANCE 

in  his  proper  place,  among  the  first  few  real  poets. 
But  he  sang  pure  French,  French  that  was  utterly 
French.  In  this  life  he  had  much  fewer  chances  than 
Musset,  and  those  few  he  used  much  worse  than  Mus- 
set  did  his;  more,  or  less,  than  Bohemian,  he  wrote 
as  classic  French  as  Musset,  but  he  gave  more  than 
that.  He  was  one  of  the  perhaps  half  dozen  who 
have  made  French  words  mysterious  and  made  them 
echo  with  the  near  and  far-off  music  that  is  poetry. 
He  is  one  of  the  half  dozen  that  have  shown  one  small 
hidden  corner  of  the  French  mind ;  all  the  rest  is  Vic- 
tor Hugo's.* 

Baudelaire  is  found  in  that  hidden  corner,  too,  but 
not  all  of  him.     The  truculent  Baudelaire  is  the  neat 

*  La  Legende  des  Slides  covers  almost  all  the  French 
taste  for  verse. 

"II  pleure  dans  mon  cceur 
Comme  il  pleut  sur  la  ville. 
Quelle  est  cette  longueur 
Qui  penetre  mon  coeurT 
0  bruit  doux  de  la  pluie 
Par  terre  et  sur  les  toits 
Pour  un  coeur  qui  s'ennuie 
Oh  le  bruit  de  la  pluie. 

"(Test  bien  la  pire  peine 

De  ne  savoir  pourguoi 

Sans  amour  et  sans  haine 

Mon  cceur  a  tant  de  peine." 
Or: 

"Que  ton  vers  soit  la  chose  envoUe 
Qu'on  sent  qui  fuit  d'une  Ame  en-allee 
Vers  d'autres  deux  d  d'autres  amours" 

Or  twenty  more  bits  from  Verlaine  come  from  that  other 
small  hidden  corner  of  the  French  mind. 

•M 


FRANCE 

Gallic  epigrammatist  in  verse;*  but  he  leaves  that 
for  poetry.  L'Invitation  au  voyage  is  mystery  and 
poetry,  not  neat  or  fiery  epigram.f  Charles  Baudelaire, 
the  publisher  of  whose  Fleurs  du  Mai  was  prosecuted 
for  immorality  under  the  Second  Empire,  is  a  French 
classic.  His  form  is  as  precise  as  La  Fontaine's  and 
sharper  than  Racine's.  But  he  is  more  than  a  French 
classic,  he  sometimes  caught  in  his  precise  form  the 
mysterious  spirit  of  poetry.  Stephane  Mallarme,  the 
pose  in  him  of  cryptic  word-tormenting  being  dis- 
counted, did  the  same.  French  playing  with  words 
he  carried  to  an  extreme  never  approached. J  Elo- 
quence he  fled  from  in  horror.  Poetry  he  attained 
to  sometimes.**  In  versification,  he  was  a  rigid  clas- 

*  "Les  amants  des  prostitutes 
Sont  heureux,  dispos  et  repus    .    .    ." 

t  "Mon  enfant,  ma  soeur 
Songe  a  la  douceur 

Trailer  la-tas  vivre  ensemble, 
Aimer  a  loisir 
Aimer  et  mourir, 

Au  pays  qui  te  ressemlle. 
Les  soleils  mouilles 
De  ces  dels  brouille's 

Pour  mon  esprit  ont  les  charmes 
Si  mysterieux 
De  tes  trattres  yeux 

Brillant  d  travers  leurs  larmes. 
La  tout  rfest  qu'ordre  et  beaute", 
Luxe,  calme  et  volupte'." 

t  Read,  for  instance,  Une  dentelle  s'dbolit,  or  Tout  orgueil 
fume-t-il  du  soir. 

**  Read,  for  instance,  the  sonnet  on  Edgar  Allan  Poe, 
"Tel  qu'en  lui-meme  enfin  V6ternit£  le  change"  or  the  yet 
more  famous  sonnet  on  the  Swan,  "Le  vierge,  le  vivace  et 
le  bel  aujourdhui  .  .  ." 

343 


FRANCE 

sic;  he  also,  besides  his  own  torturing  riddles,  put 
into  that  form  sometimes  a  far-reaching  mystery  that 
it  seems  a  miracle  to  have  entrapped  even  at  one  end 
so  neatly. 

The  wonder  of  the  rare  real  French  poetry  is  that 
it  has  caught  the  hem  of  shadows  in  precise  words 
and  suggested  in  sharp  sayings  things  beyond.  Good 
French  verse  is  satisfying  thought  and  excellent  han- 
dicraft, and  suggests  nothing  beyond ;  read  Theophile 
Gautier,  Theodore  de  Banville,  Leconte  de  Lisle,  Sully 
Prudhomme,  Jose  Maria  de  Heredia.  Call  them,  as 
they  called  themselves,  Romantics  or  Parnassians,  they 
are  just  pure  artists  in  words,  not  those  magicians 
we  call  real  poets.  They  are  the  perfect  craftsmen, 
and  whoever  can  understand  French  artistry  of  words 
— as  who  should  be  a  connoisseur  in  LouisXV  cabinet- 
making — revels  in  them.  Gautier  reveled  himself  in 
his  own  exquisite  joinery,  the  nice  and  rare  choice 
of  his  materials — words — the  delicate  and  curious 
piecing  together  of  them  into  verse.  Banville  rioted 
in  his  rhymes  and  remains  as  the  inventor  of  the 
most  extraordinary  rhyming  in  French  verse.  Le- 
conte de  Lisle  solemnly  joyed  in  his  cold  and  stately 
picturesqueness,  turning  with  satisfaction  Greek 
drama  when  he  touched  it  into  a  perfect  museum 
piece,  quite  dead  but  beautifully  preserved.  Sully 
Prudhomme's  genteelly  resigned  philosophy  would 
never  be  read  in  prose ;  in  his  clear,  sharp,  sometimes 

Mi 


FRANCE 

deep  sounding  verse  it  is  interesting.  Heredia  paints 
excellently  composed  pictures  in  faultless  sonnets.  All 
this  is  very  French  and  could  not  be  anything  but 
French.  No  other  contemporary  literature,  probably 
no  other  literature,  has  had  such  a  body  of  admirable 
uninspired  craftsmen  of  letters.  The  divine  ones,  who 
have  "drunk  the  milk  of  Paradise,"  are  perhaps  even 
a  little  rarer  in  French  literature  than  in  some  others. 
Jean  Moreas,  a  Greek,  whose  modern  Greek  name  was, 
I  believe,  something  like  Papadiamantopoulos,  was 
more  French  than  the  French  and  made  the  fame  of 
Neo-Classicism,  that  imitated  Racine.  The  great  Bel- 
gian poet,  Eaaile  Verhaeren,  who  always  wrote  in 
French,  though  often  of  his  own  Flanders,  was  the 
French  Walt  Whitman;  but  Whitman,  though  he 
might  have  written  Les  V'illes  Tentaculaires,  certainly 
never  could  have  written  Les  Molnes. 

Was  there  ever  a  writer  more  characteristic  of  a 
nation's  taste  than  Guy  de  Maupassant  ?  Among  mod- 
ern French  prose  artists  I  think  he  is  the  most  French. 
Michelet  had  eloquence,  which  is  a  French  gift,  but 
not  the  highest.  His  history  is  dead,  his  eloquence 
is  read  still,  but  the  final  honesty  of  the  French  in- 
telligence jibes  at  it.  Of  the  two  Dumas,  the  elder 
had  a  satisfying  imagination  and  no  style,  and  is  called 
a  master  romancer  everywhere  except  in  France;  the 
younger  wrote  neatly  and  did  not  think  very  care- 
fully, and  his  plays,  played  with  fracas,  were  rather 
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FRANCE 

soon  forgotten.  Alphonse  Daudet  had  sentiment  and 
wit  and  what  is  rarer  in  French  literature,  humor, 
sometimes  almost  Dickensian  humor.  Zola  had  no  hu- 
mor and  no  wit,  but  a  simple  force  of  romantic  senti- 
ment. The  two  Goncourts  had  no  sentiment,  but  were 
the  dilettanti  looking  on  with  admirable  keenness. 
Flaubert,  as  impersonal,  was  a  far  greater  artist,  a 
supreme  artist,  yet  sometimes  nearly  swamped  by  his 
art,  as  in  Salambo.  Henry  Becque  kept  his  art  so 
well  under  that  his  work  is  summed  up  in  that  per- 
fect piece  of  fierce  irony,  La  Parisienne.  Pierre  Loti 
will  be  remembered  as  a  perhaps  not  really  humanly 
sensitive  writer,  but  one  who  sometimes  supremely 
saw  and  told  of  the  souls  and  tears  of  things. 

Guy  de  Maupassant,  Ernest  Renan,  Maurice  Mae- 
terlinck, Anatole  France,  Jules  Lemaitre:  these  may 
finally  to-day  sum  up  the  French  literary  mind  in 
all  its  variety  and  unity.  A  marvelous  variety  it  is: 
the  Maupassant  of  the  witty  and  tragic  tales,  Renan 
pellucid  yet  full  of  dreams,  Maeterlinck  how  differ- 
ent yet  in  the  same  way  at  once  haunted  by  the  be- 
yond and  a  precise  artist  in  the  present,  France  and 
Lemaitre,  both  masters  of  irony.  They  are  of  one 
spirit  also:  exquisitely  sardonic  Jules  Lemaitre  crit- 
icizing lightly  and  piercingly,  and  renewing  Aris- 
tophanes with  a  lighter  than  an  Aristophaneque  touch ; 
Anatole  France  looking  at  the  human  comedy  of  his 
time  with  an  eye  that  sees  everything  and  flashes  and 

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sparkles  but  forgives  at  last  most  things ;  Maurice 
Maeterlinck  writing  the  simplest  words  and  conjuring 
up  other  worlds ;  Ernest  Renan  praising  the  Parthenon 
in  that  eternal  Prlere  sur  I'Acropole  with  the  only 
perfect  words  that  ever  fitted  the  Parthenon,  and  at 
the  end  calling  up  his  own  gray  Brittany  and  with 
it  all  the  dreams  of  another  world  of  men;  Guy  de 
Maupassant  writing  the  human  comedy  with  a  final 
conciseness  that  makes  all  writers  despair,  and  now 
and  then  breaking  off  into  the  inhuman  with  terrible 
force. 

The  first  common  trait  seen  in  these  five  is  that 
all  have  style  in  the  broadest  sense  and  do  not  lapse 
from  it,  never  as  for  instance  the  genius  of  Dickens, 
Edgar  Allan  Poe,  Thackeray  sometimes  lapses.  None 
ever  lets  himself  go  along  the  line  of  least  resistance 
— which  in  French  writing  is  eloquence  and  in  Eng- 
lish false  sentiment.  Included  in  style  is  literary 
measure  and  taste.  The  second  common  trait  is  hu- 
man sanity.  Maurice  Maeterlinck  tells  of  the  strang- 
est dreams  in  clear  plain  words.  Guy  de  Maupassant 
in  Le  Horla  is  yet  not  inhuman,  because  he  is  strug- 
gling to  be  sane  and  human.  Good  workmanship  and 
human  feeling  are  what  the  French  mind  likes.  I 
have  said  that  Maupassant  is  the  most  French  of  mod- 
ern French  prose  artists.  He  is  not  indeed  all  French 
even  only  literary  thought,  but  he  is  all  French  lit- 
erary art.  He  not  only  started  out  to  be  the  French 
347 


FRANCE 

literary  artist,  but  he  was.  He  meant  to  'do  exactly 
what  he  did,  and  he  found  in  his  readers  a  perfect 
response.  Where  a  Meredith  or  a  Henry  James  piles 
up,  Maupassant  chooses,  and  chooses  the  one  right 
thing,  and  his  parsimony  often  tells  us  as  much  as 
their  lavishness.  To  save  your  strokes  of  the  pen 
is  the  lesson  he  teaches.  His  tales  are  written  as  if 
each  were  a  long  novel  condensed.  Is  he  not  dried 
and  hard?  There  is  some  juiciness  about  Henry 
James  and  Meredith  which  he  has  not.  But  the 
French  mind  willingly  puts  up  with  less  vital  rich- 
ness for  the  sake  of  more  structural  balance  and 
finish. 

m 

The  whole  history  of  French  moral  philosophy 
proves  the  natural  bent  of  the  French  mind  for  the 
subjective  outlook  upon  the  world.  Great  realists  in 
life,  the  French  are  chiefly  idealists  in  thought. 
French  philosophy  in  the  nineteenth  century  carries 
on  the  same  proof.  In  one  of  the  most  realist  of 
ages  one  of  the  most  realist  of  peoples  has  contin- 
ued through  its  philosophies  its  subjective  specula- 
tion imperturbably,  has  looked  at  things  from  within 
itself.  The  opposition  here  made  between  realism  and 
idealism  is  not  metaphysical:  metaphysical  realism  is, 
of  course,  from  the  psychological  point  of  view  still 
idealism  and  still  a  purely  subjective  outlook,  since 
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FRANCE 

the  mind  endows  with  absolute  reality  its  own  con- 
cepts. Modern  French  philosophy  offers  a  sharp  con- 
trast firstly  with  other  European  contemporary  phil- 
osophies except  the  German;  even  among  the  latter 
Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  is  less  subjective 
than  modern  French  systems,  grants  to  human  reason 
less  than  they  do.  Secondly  modern  French  moral 
philosophers  offer  a  sharp  contrast  with  modern 
French  natural  philosophers  in  the  exact  sciences  and 
the  sciences  of  observation.  French  science  in  the 
nineteenth  century  with  Monge,  Leverrier,  Arago, 
Ampere,  Lavoisier,  with  Cuvier,  Lamarck,  Geoffrey 
St.  Hilaire,  Berthelot,  looked  at  the  objective  world, 
looked  at  things  for  the  things  themselves,  not  for 
the  sake  of  the  mind,  and  looked  at  them  as  keenly 
and  as  successfully  as  the  science  of  any  other  na- 
tion. Modern  French  moral  philosophy  has  sought 
almost  exclusively  human  reason  in  things,  and  sought 
it  more  ardently  than  in  previous  ages.  The  nine- 
teenth century,  the  century  of  observation  for  all 
sciences  and  for  French  science,  was  the  century  of 
introspection  for  French  philosophy. 

There  are  only  two  great  names  in  French  modern 
philosophy  of  induction,  Auguste  Comte  and  Taine, 
and  one  of  them  represents  a  fancied  study  of  the 
world,  really  an  a  priori  shaping  of  the  world;  the 
other  recalls  much  greater  literary  judgment  and  taste 
than  the  theories  they  adorned.  The  rest  of  nine- 
349 


FRANCE 

teenth-century  French  philosophy  does  not  look  for 
forms  of  human  intelligence  to  fit  the  world,  but 
fashions  the  world  to  fit  the  forms  of  human  intelli- 
gence. There  were  at  first,  after  Maine  de  Biran, 
a  precursor  who  went  back  on  Condillac's  Sensualism, 
what  I  may  call  and  others  have  called  in  correspond- 
ing words  the  milk  and  water  modern  French  Idealism 
of  Victor  Cousin  and  Paul  Janet  which  is  forgotten, 
but  which  must  be  remembered  as  having  been  for 
nearly  half  a  century  the  official  philosophy  of  the 
Sorbonne — while  European  science  and  French  science 
were  scrutinizing  facts.  A  partly  contemporaneous 
but  generally  later  school  of  metaphysics  went  deeper. 
Fouillee  thought  of  idees-forces,  the  human  mind 
strong  enough  to  create  the  objective  world ;  Lachelier 
was  the  pure  idealist ;  Renouvier  classified  the  a  priori 
categories  on  the  one  hand  and  revived  the  Monads 
of  Leibnitz  on  the  other ;  Ravaisson,  of  Victor  Cousin's 
school,  but  a  more  definite  thinker,  conceived  the  idea  of 
God  to  be  a  "cumulative  intuition";  Emile  Boutroux 
dotted  the  i'*  of  fifty  years  of  French  idealism  by 
denying  necessity  and  proclaiming  in  a  famous  treatise 
that  the  laws  of  nature  are  contingent:  the  only  true 
basis  for  an  idealism.  The  only  satisfying  theory 
also  for  a  human  reason  that  thinks  it  surveys  nat- 
ural laws  and  perhaps  helps  to  make  them.  The 
darling  sin  of  French  philosophy  has  been  an  arro- 
gant pride  in  human  reason.  Hence  the  shock  caused 
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FRANCE 

by  the  French  philosopher  of  Jewish  descent,  Henri 
Bergson,  whose  chief  contribution  to  metaphysics  has 
been  his  sapping  of  purely  intellectual  theories  of 
things.  It  is  indeed  significant  that  Bergson  has  been 
called  un-French  and  has  been  honored  more  outside 
than  in  his  own  country.  There  is  doubtless  no  other 
people  that  would  take  to  heart  an  attempt  upon 
human  reason  and  be  capable  of  feeling  patriotic 
resentment  because  the  ability  of  the  human  mind  to 
conceive  the  Universe  intellectually  has  been  ques- 
tioned. 

IV 

From  French  art  in  color  and  form  the  same  ar- 
guments respecting  national  character  can  be  drawn 
as  from  French  philosophy;  the  analogy  is  loose,  of 
course,  but  not  false.  French  painters,  like  all  paint- 
ers, have  looked  at  nature  with  their  own  eyes.  But 
they  have  perhaps  more  than  other  such  seers  looked 
with  a  will  to  see  of  their  own.  The  so-called  plein- 
airist  school  and  the  school  of  Barbizon  through  the 
eyes  of  Corot,  Millet  and  Theodore  Rousseau  saw  of 
Ville  d'Avray  ponds,  of  Fontainebleau  woods  and  of 
the  plains  of  Chailly  only  what  a  romantic  tempera- 
ment of  simple  poetry  let  them  see.  Before  them 
were  the  great  Romantics  who  included  by  the  side 
of  Delacroix  classics  like  David  and  Ingres,  both 
perhaps  sometimes  the  truest  realists.  It  was  some  of 
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the  English  landscape  painters  who  tried  to  forget 
themselves  and  paint  Nature  objectively.  It  was  the 
French  who  made  the  great  revolution  which  was  called 
Impressionism  and  from  which  all  modern  painting 
derives.  From  Courbet  and  Manet  to  Monet,  Pissarro, 
Sisley,  Degas,  Cezanne,  Renoir,  Fantin-Latour,  Car- 
riere,  French  art  in  color  and  form  has  been  su- 
premely and  beautifully  subjective.  It  has  created 
a  world  for  itself;  it  has  for  those  who  can  see  re- 
created the  world.  It  thought,  as  far  as  painters 
ever  think  (they  think  intelligently  only  with  their 
paint-brushes),  that  it  was  photographing  nature,  and 
really  it  was  mirroring  itself  supremely.  The  great 
self-confessed  idealists  like  Puvis  de  Chavannes  or 
Gustave  Moreau  were  not  more  idealist  than  the  im- 
pressionists. Van  Gogh  and  Gauguin  were  purely 
subjective,  though  they  thought  exactly  the  contrary. 
Rodin,  perhaps  the  most  impersonal  of  all,  with  his 
supreme  vision  of  form,  yet  forced  nature  to  fit  his 
vision. 

In  architectural  art  no  men  made  modern  France, 
for  there  is  no  modern  French  architectural  art. 
Sculptors  did  work  that  would  have  made  perfect 
beautiful  buildings:  Barye's  wonderful  wild  beasts, 
Falguiere's  in  the  best  sense  well  staged  statues,  Bar- 
tholome's  romantic  tragedies  in  stone,  Rude's  grand 
drama  in  stone,  besides  the  all-embracing  work  of 
Rodin,  classic  and  almost  cubist,  seraphic  and  tor- 
352 


FRANCE 

mented.  But  the  beautiful  buildings  were  not  there 
to  be  made  perfect.  Rude's  great  stone  singers  of 
the  Marseillaise,  a  splendid  group,  are  at  the  base 
of  the  Arc  de  Triomphe,  which  is  obviously  only  a 
copy  of  a  sturdy  Roman  arch,  without  any  Greek 
elegance,  and  a  slavish  copy  at  that.  And  the  su- 
preme work  of  one  of  the  masters  of  truth  and  grace 
in  modern  French  sculpture,  the  dancing  girls  of 
Carpeaux,  is  put  up  outside  one  of  the  tawdriest  if 
most  costly  buildings  of  modern  Europe,  the  Paris 
Opera-house.  There  has  been  no  original  art  of 
building  in  France  (if  elsewhere)  since  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  one  wonders  that  a  mind  as  fertile  as 
the  French  in  other  arts  has  gone  on  building  a  house 
by  mimicry.  There  is  not  a  single  building  under  a 
hundred  years  old  in  France  to-day  that  is  not  a 
make-up  of  the  ideas  that  French  architects  had  be- 
fore, and  in  the  jumble  of  composite  Renaissance, 
seventeenth  century,  Jesuit,  Romanesque,  with  dashes 
of  modern  Munich,  too,  the  only  pleasant  and  sane 
modern  building  finally  is  the  closest  copy  of  an 
old  one. 


Among  men  who  made  modern  French  music 
Wagner.     Berlioz,  his  greatest  French  contemporary, 
who  was  a  complete  objectivist,  to  use  convenient  Ger- 
man jargon,  while  he  was  in  great  part  a  subjectivist 
353 


FRANCE 

in  music,  had  far  less  influence  on  French  composers 
than  he.  Cesar  Franck,  the  greatest  and  purist  reli- 
gious artist  in  music  since  Handel,  stood  alone.  No 
modern  French  composer  had  as  much  influence  on 
French  music  as  Wagner.  Yet  there  was  real  mod- 
ern French  music  that  owed  nothing  to  Wagner. 
Bizet's  Carmen  and  VArlesienne  will  always  remain 
fresh  and  young.  Gounod,  a  child  beside  Wagner, 
sang  his  own  simple  songs  and  they  were  his  own. 
Wagner,  taken  rather  too  solemnly  sometimes,  killed 
quite  unnecessarily  the  light  French  music  of  the 
Second  Empire  and  after.  There  was  real  music  in 
Offenbach,  Audran,  Lecocq.  La  fille  de  Madame  An- 
got  remains  real  music.  Why  has  light  French  music 
almost  died  out?  There  is  not  a  Viennese  operetta 
that  is  music  of  the  same  class  as  Madame  An  got. 

The  monster  Wagner  hypnotized,  understandably 
enough,  perhaps  the  greatest  of  his  French  successors. 
Vincent  d'Indy,  his  greatest  disciple,  is  by  himself  a 
fine  musician,  but  one  wonders  what  his  Fervaal,  his 
Wallenstem,  would  have  been,  and  what  Reyer's  Sigurd 
would  have  been,  had  there  been  no  Wagner.  Saint- 
Saens  hovered  between  Meyerbeer  and  Wagner,  hap- 
pily almost  always  more  sincere  than  the  former.  It  is 
true  that  Massenet  always  sang  his  own  little  song, 
like  Gounod,  but  more  artful  and  less  genuine.  Lalo's 
was  real  music  in  the  Roi  d'Ys,  in  the  Rhapsodic 
Espagnole,  but  it  might  have  been  very  different  had 
354 


FRANCE 

there  been  no  Wagner.  Alfred  Bruneau's  Messidor 
and  other  operas  would  certainly  have  been  quite  other 
in  that  case.  And  I  think  one  may  say  the  same  of 
Gustave  Charpentier's  Louise. 

It  was  Claude  Debussy  who  said  that  Wagner's 
leit-motives — the  same  old  tune  always  harping  on 
the  same  hero — would  at  last  drive  him  mad.  The 
coming  French  school  of  musicians  shook  itself  free 
of  Wagner.  Emmanuel  Chabrier,  Ernest  Chausson, 
Alberic  Magnard,  Paul  Dukas,  Maurice  Ravel,  are  a 
few  among  many  names  of  dead  and  living.  Mag- 
nard was  killed  by  the  Germans  in  his  cottage  dur- 
ing the  invasion  of  1914.  From  the  popular  point 
of  view,  Claude  Debussy  best  stands  for  the  new 
school  of  French  music,  and  about  what  the  latter 
wants  to  do  the  easiest  thing  to  say  is,  if  loosely, 
that  it  is  trying  to  create  in  music  what  Impressionism 
created  in  painting.  Debussy's  Prelude  a  Vapresmidi 
ffun  faune,  his  later  sketches  like  Mer,  Nuages,  could, 
one  might  almost  say,  be  translated  back  from  sound 
into  color  by  a  painter  with  the  same  quick  gift  of 
catching  the  fleeting  instant. 


CHAPTER  XX 


LES    JEUNES 


THEEE  is  not  a  new  France.  The  war  did  not  re- 
make France.  Young  France  is  not  regenerate. 
There  is  no  miracle  in  the  France  of  to-day,  not  even 
a  Joan  of  Arc.  To  listen  to  some  (and  in  France, 
too)  one  would  think  France  had  just  been  saved  from 
the  abyss,  the  French  spirit  rescued  from  perdition, 
and  French  youth  transfigured.  Those  who  know 
France  know  that  there  is  no  new  France,  but  the 
same  old  France.  It  is  preaching  to  converts  now  to 
say  that  one  knew  France  would  not  be  found  wanting, 
but  the  converts  are  very  new  ones.  They  told  us  the 
other  day  copiously  (it  was  the  other  day,  before  the 
war,  but  it  seems  an  age  ago)  how  the  country  had 
gone  to  the  dogs ;  the  old  spirit  was  spent,  the  nation 
rotten,  age  cynical  and  youth  effete.  Then,  in  the 
hour  of  stress,  they  discover  "the  new  France." 

There  is  no  new  France.     Any  one  who  had  seen 

France  with  half  an  eye,  half  a  seeing  eye  at  all  events, 

knew  that  when  the  great  crux  came  anti-militarists 

and  jingoes  would  stand  together  and  priests  with 

356 


FRANCE 

Anarchists,  that  every  Frenchman  would  fight  to  a 
finish  for  his  homestead  and  the  French  mind  die 
rather  than  be  downed.  Les  Jeunes  of  to-day  have 
died  in  hundreds  of  thousands  for  their  country  and 
hundreds  of  thousands  more  will  die  before  victory, 
which  none  dying  doubted  and  none  living  doubts,  is 
won.  This  is  not  a  jot  more  than  was  expected  of 
them  or  they  had  bargained  to  give.  It  is  the  old, 
old  France. 

The  Jeunes  of  to-day  are  in  the  trenches.  The 
Jeunes  of  the  1915  contingent  are,  those  who  survive, 
old  soldiers  now.  The  Jeunes  of  the  1916  contingent, 
boys  of  nineteen,  went  to  the  front  in  the  spring  of 
1916 — and  how  many  live  now?  The  noblest  of  wars 
makes  a  hideous  gap  in  a  nation's  young  thought. 
But  the  gap  will  be  bridged.  After  the  war  young 
thinking  France  will  carry  on  the  torch,  as  it  was 
handed  on  before.  There  is  no  break  in  the  genera- 
tions of  Jeunes  that  follow  one  another.  I  shall  try 
to  make  clear  that  those  who  in  their  day  were  suc- 
cessively called  the  Jeunes  inherited  and  bequeathed, 
and  I  will  determinedly  prophesy  that  the  heritage  will 
be  taken  up  with  profit.  There  is  no  new  France,  and 
the  old  France  will  go  on. 

The  name  of  Les  Jeunes  is  really  not  used  now,  and 

was  indeed  already  old-fashioned  before  the  war.   The 

last  Jeunes,  properly  so  called  in  French  parlance, 

belong  to  the  "classes"  of  1890  or  thereabouts,  the 

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FRANCE 

military  contingents  that  were  twenty  years  of  age 
in  the  early  nineties,  and  are  among  the  veterans  who 
were  called  up  and  who  guard  railways  or  dig  trenches 
or  here  and  there  still  are  in  the  firing-line.  The  first 
Jeunes  are  either  fifty  and  past  military  age,  or  are 
dead,  like  Stuart  Merrill  and  Remy  de  Gourmont  and 
many  another  who  died  shyly  and  noiselessly  as  it 
behooves  a  civilian  to  die  in  war-time. 

But  the  names  of  Les  Jeunes  is  a  handy  one  still  for 
use  in  a  quick  sketch  of  modern-thinking  France. 
There  will  always  be  French  Jeunes,  for  one  thing, 
however  the  name  fall  into  abeyance,  and  the  French 
themselves  should  not  let  the  name  drop,  for  the  sake 
of  their  ever-young  intellectual  inquisitiveness  and 
initiative.  I  use  here  the  name  conveniently  for  the 
thinkers  of  France  to-day  whose  work  has  not  yet 
passed  into  history  and  also  for  those  who  are  begin- 
ning to  think  for  France  and  will  have  to  make  the 
France  of  to-morrow. 

The  Jeunes,  then,  are  they  who  after  one  war  car- 
ried on  thinking  France — to  another;  who  when 
1870-71,  in  a  dozen  years  or  so,  was  healing  up,  car- 
ried on  the  ever-young  thought  of  France,  who  upheld 
and  enriched  it  until  the  ghastly  cataclysm  of  1914, 
and  who  to-morrow  will  keep  the  flame  alight  still. 
Not  theirs  the  fault  that  the  period  must  be  dated  by 
wars.  Their  fault,  indeed,  was  to  think  trustfully 
while  the  foe  was  plotting  war.  The  savage  awaken- 
358 


FRANCE 

ing  may  make  a  difference  in  the  Jeunes'  thought  of 
to-morrow. 

The  period  was  one  of  various,  contradictory,  en- 
tertaining and  illuminating  thought,  though  through 
all  its  twists  and  bounds  it  was  the  same  French 
thought.  Maurice  Barres,  the  artist-anarchist  of  the 
eighties  and  president  of  the  League  of  Patriots  to- 
day, is  the  same  Maurice  Barres.  Remy  de  Gourmont 
in  praise  of  Voltaire,  and  Charles  Peguy  (killed  in 
action)  singing  his  strange,  reiterative,  nai've  and 
skilful  chants  of  Joan  of  Arc  are  both  equally  French. 
It  was  a  period  that  ran  gaily  and  quickly  through 
all  the  moods  of  French  thought,  from  Voltaire  to 
Amiel,  from  Boileau  to  Verlaine,  whose  solemn  joke 
was  that  Boileau  was  his  favorite  poet.  Every  suc- 
cessive decade,  or  even  lustrum,  of  Jeunes  spurned 
the  previous  one,  made  a  fresh  philosophy  and  read 
the  world  anew. 

II 

Symbolism,  Art  for  Art's  sake  and  Anarchism :  that 
is  roughly  the  first  phase  of  the  Jeunes,  down  to  the 
nineties.  The  Mysticism  of  Life,  Life  for  Life's  sake, 
the  return  to  Nature,  was  the  second,  about  to  the 
end  of  the  century.  The  third  included  a  revival  of 
religious  orthodoxy,  Neo-Classicism,  constructive  so- 
cial politics.  There  were  of  course  also  many  sub- 
divisions in  time  and  in  doctrine.  You  can  imagine 
359 


FRANCE 

how  each  successive  faith  fought  its  predecessor.   But 
it  was  all  very  French. 

The  first  Jeunes  were  not  the  mere  fantastics  they 
have  been  painted,  and  had  much  more  honesty  and 
reason  in  them  than  has  often  been  assumed.  I  try 
to  explain  in  another  chapter  what  Symbolism  actually 
was:  a  venture  to  find  afresh  the  springs  of  real 
poetry  through  the  sense  of  mystery,  and  a  revolt 
against  the  eloquence  of  French  Romanticism.  Art 
for  Art's  sake,  which  certainly  won  a  bad  name,  was 
not  mere  cafe  pose  or  drawing-room  foppery.  There 
were  of  course  fools  for  Art's  sake.  It  was  easy  for 
the  artist  to  fool  once  he  had  the  manner.  It  was 
also  very  easy  to  make  fun  of  him  in  ignorance,  not 
easy  at  all  to  know  him.  I  remember  years  ago  a 
satire  by  an  English  journalist  of  the  poet  for 
poetry's  sake  which  was  keen  and  comic,  until  one 
gradually  understood  that  the  man  satirized  was — 
Verlaine.  There  were  funny  and  true  traits  in  the 
journalistic  sketch — but  the  man  was  Verlaine.  An 
impossible  and  even  monstrous  person,  of  course,  and 
indeed  ridiculous — but  still,  Verlaine.  No  one  is  en- 
titled to  say  that  to  men  who  gave  what  Verlaine  gave 
much  may  be  forgiven.  There  is  nothing  that  has  to 
be  forgiven  them  in  the  long  run.  That  alone  jus- 
tifies Art  for  Art's  sake.  With  many  follies  those 
Jeunes  tried  for  beauty.  They  and  their  masters 
often  fooled  themselves.  Stephane  Mallarme  all  his 
360 


FRANCE 

life  tried  to  put  into  ten  words  the  mystery  of  a  fleet- 
ing minute,  and  he  kept  in  a  cupboard  in  his  little  flat 
a  wonderful  manuscript  which  was  to  be  the  work  of 
his  life  and  which  when  he  died  was  found  to  be  blank 
paper.  But  Mallarme  reached  beauty  sometimes,  and 
that  was  all  that  mattered  or  that  he  cared  twopence 
about,  and  he  knew  it.  What  else,  indeed,  when  you 
come  to  think  of  it,  should  have  mattered  for  him? 
The  man  who  builds  an  engine  is  asked  only  to  build 
a  good  engine.  The  artist  who  has  made  a  little 
beauty  has  also  done  his  job.  Art  for  Art's  sake, 
shorn  of  cant  and  flummery  (and  these  Jeunes  them- 
selves were  not  cant-guiltless)  is  really  a  sound 
phrase.  The  phrase  has  become  ridiculous.  But  read 
it  freshly.  For  the  sake  of  what  can  art  be  save  for 
its  own? 

That  time  had  the  utmost  horror  of  a  social  or  any 
purpose  in  art.  Certainly  a  bad  poem  can  not  have 
a  good  purpose.  But  that  time  aimed  at  no  purpose 
either  in  its  art  or  outside  it.  Those  Jeunes  were 
frankly  Anarchists.  They  refused  to  be  woven  into 
the  social  fabric,  they  refused  that  essential  satisfac- 
tion of  all  other  Frenchmen  and  women — a  "social 
position."  They  did  not  invent  Bohemianism,  of 
course,  and  they  were  no  Bohemians  a  la  Henry 
Murger  who  were  just  plain  honest  citizens  fooling 
amusingly  while  young.  Of  course,  also,  they  did 
have  a  place  in  society  and  perforce  drew  livelihoods 
361 


FRANCE 

from  incomes  or  work.  But  they  quite  honestly  apolo- 
gized for  having  to  live  and  were  honestly  angry  with 
a  world  out  of  joint.  Angry,  indeed  bitter,  and 
sometimes  morose,  real  Jeunes  though  they  remained ; 
that  somber  strain  inside  them  made  them  different 
from  the  Bohemians  of  the  old  Latin  Quarter  before 
1870. 

They  were  Anarchists  in  revolt  against  a  social 
world  that  had  failed,  which  did  not  honestly  strive 
for  better  things,  in  which  the  man  professing  to  help 
the  world  on  was  no  better  than  the  man  who  only 
enjoyed  it  and  Socialist  and  Reactionary  were  alike 
on  the  make.  They  were  Anarchists,  not  at  all  So- 
cialists. They  agreed  with  Baudelaire,  who  violently 
refused  alms  to  a  beggar:  "Had  you  hit  me  in  the 
face  I  would  have  given  you  all  I  have."  They  did 
not  believe  in  society  and  they  did  not  believe  either 
in  those  who  said  they  meant  to  change  society.  It 
is  one  of  the  deepest  traits  of  that  artistic  generation 
that  it  held  aloof  absolutely  from  all  political  France 
and  from  all  the  political  growth  the  Third  Republic 
was  going  through.  Those  Jeunes  savagely  ignored 
political  and  social  essentials. 

It  was,  in  a  strain,  a  bitter  generation.  One  un- 
derstands why  now.  They  themselves  never  under- 
stood. They  had  no  idea  that  what  rankled  in  them, 
the  men  who  had  been  boys  in  1870,  was  the  iron  of 
defeat  that  had  entered  into  the  French  soul,  until 


FRANCE 

that  very  iron  should  make  the  French  soul  stronger. 
They  were  too  near  the  cause  to  see  it,  and  vehemently 
ignored  it.  They  said  and  wrote  and  apparently 
thought  nothing  about  what  France  had  gone  through 
and  what  she  was  retrieving.  They  professed  to  no 
patriotism,  they  ridiculed  the  League  of  Patriots,  they 
suffered  when  poor  great-hearted  Paul  Deroulede 
foolishly  led  Anti-Lohengrin  riots,  they  violently 
scouted  La  Revanche,  and  Remy  de  Gourmont  said 
(what  was  always  afterward  unjustly  brought  up 
against  him  and  he  well  made  amends  for  before  he 
died)  that  he  would  not  give  his  little  finger  for  Al- 
sace-Lorraine. 

Now  one  sees,  what  they  did  not,  that  their  bitter- 
ness was  France  taking  her  tonic  and  recovering. 
They  were  not,  of  course,  always  so  bitter  as  all  that. 
They  often  got  some  fun  out  of  their  Anarchism. 
They  naturally  got  an  immense  amount  of  fun  out 
of  their  art.  Their  Anarchic  aloofness  also  gave  them 
satisfaction.  The  Anarchists  who  threw  bombs, 
Henry,  Ravachol,  Vaillant,  were  discussed  by  those 
Jeunes  with  cool  and  careful  impartiality,  and  on  the 
whole  little  was  found  to  be  said  against  them.  "Does 
vague  humankind  matter,  if  there  be  beauty  in  the 
gesture?"  said  Laurent  Tailhade  (much  older  than 
the  then  Jeunes)  of  an  Anarchist  outrage,  and  soon 
himself  had  an  eye  damaged  by  another  Anarchist 
bomb.  At  the  fag  end  of  the  period  I  remember  be* 


FRANCE 

ing  with  other  Jeunes,  then  very  jeune,  among  the 
gods  at  a  Sunday  concert.  The  Tristan  prelude  was 
being  played.  Behind  us  was  a  cloaked  and  hooded 
man  who  kept  his  hands  under  his  cloak.  Undoubt- 
edly an  Anarchist  with  a  bomb  ready  to  throw.  We 
whispered  to  one  another,  "We  will  hear  the  Tristan 
out,"  and  were  perhaps,  or  pretended  to  be,  disap- 
pointed because  we  were  not  blown  up  listening  to 
Tristan,  the  cloaked  man  having  had  no  idea  of  bombs. 


Ill 


The  "Classe  1890"  (recruits  twenty  years  of  age 
that  year)  or  thereabouts,  were  the  last  Anarchists  of 
the  Jeunes.  The  "Classes  1890-5"  rediscovered  Man 
and  Society.  They  had  no  idea  that,  as  they  know 
now,  they  were  the  sign  of  a  vital  moment  in  France 
to-day,  and  that  while  they  had  grown  up  she  had  been 
healed  and  remade.  They  made  their  great  discoveries 
quite  freshly.  They  discovered  Life  as  well  as  Man 
and  Society.  It  does  not  sound  an  original  thing  to 
do  at  twenty,  but  they  thought  it  was,  and  it  was  for 
them.  They  found  out  that  life  was  worth  living  and 
told  everybody  so,  told  France  so,  told  it  to  the  Jeunes 
of  before,  who  had  sometimes  wondered  even  whether 
art  which  they  knew  exquisitely  was  worth  while.  In  a 
year  or  two  the  Latin  Quarter  and  soon  after  half  a 
dozen  provincial  towns  were  ablaze  with  young  maga- 
364- 


FRANCE 

zines  published  to  praise  Life.  Not  long  before  Mai- 
larme  had  said  "La  litterature  seule  existe"  and  con- 
temporary Jeunes  revues  had  said  the  same.  Now 
the  only  thing  was  to  live,  and  though  one  wrote  about 
it  one  must  write,  not  nicely  with  subtle  words,  but  in 
dashing  gusts,  as  it  were  in  the  short  intervals  of  real 
living.  Decadentism,  a  pose  of  the  previous  Jeunes, 
was  solemnly  denounced,  and  it  is  amusing  to  record 
that  precisely  when  Paris  journalism,  and  the  jour- 
nalism of  the  world  after  it,  was  playing  at  being  Fin 
de  Siecle  and  thus  up-to-date,  young  thinking  France 
was  beginning  a  new  world,  or  thought  it  was,  and  to 
think  one's  world  new  proves  it  so. 

A  new  world  in  which  everything  human  mattered. 
I  shall  always  remember  the  gusto  with  which  we  dis- 
covered the  Divine  Average.  This  did  not  apply  only 
to  bus  conductors  and  navvies.  Even  stock-brokers 
and  porkbutchers  became  interesting.  Floating  com- 
panies and  selling  sausages  were  human  activity  after 
all.  The  grocer,  actually  the  grocer,  I'epicire,  be- 
fore the  accepted  particular  personification  of  the 
Philistine  (why  particularly  the  grocer  no  one  ever 
knew)  was  a  man  and  how  much  he  made  out  of  a 
pound  of  sugar  was  interesting. 

An  absurd  new  world:  yet  new.  A  world  in  which 
the  Jeune  actually  became  reconciled  to  Man  and  to 
Men  and  to  Men's  work  around  him,  renounced  aloof- 
ness and  dilettanteism,  shattered  the  Ivory  Tower  and 
365 


FRANCE 

suddenly  put  the  Common  Man  on  a  pedestal,  grate- 
ful to  be  of  one  flesh  with  him.  This  new  Jeune 
learned  to  know  the  Divine  Average  considerably  from 
Walt  Whitman,  then  just  translated  into  French,  and 
at  the  same  time  Emile  Verhaeren  taught  him  the 
poetry  of  man's  grimmest  labor,  of  forges  and  mines 
and  blast  furnaces  and  railways.  The  mysticism  of 
the  Ivory  Tower  and  the  cult  of  the  Ego  was  turned 
into  the  mysticism  of  mankind  and  Man's  works.  It 
was  as  absolute  positively  as  Anarchism  had  been  nega- 
tively :  everything  human  was  right  and  since  a  thing 
was  in  nature  it  was  good.  I  am  afraid  these  Jeunes 
though  social  enthusiastically  were  not  much  more 
constructive  than  their  predecessors  who  had  been 
anti-social.  They  returned  to  Nature,  they  praised 
Man  and  Man's  works,  they  worshiped  Life,  they 
reinstated  our  common  manhood  into  its  proper  divine 
place  with  beautiful  ingenuousness,  and  they  had  a 
great  many  schemes  for  regenerating  the  world  on 
these  lines.  But  political  constructiveness  was  not 
their  forte.  They  had  no  more  truck  than  their  prede- 
cessors with  any  political  parties  of  progress,  reform, 
or  upheaval,  none  of  which  to  their  liking  had  a  suf- 
ficiently mystic  social  sense.  In  fact  they  dreamed  and 
did  little.  But  it  must  be  said  they  scarcely  had  time 
— better,  have  not  yet  had  time.  What  they  brought, 
those  Jeunes,  if  it  was  only  great  young  dreaming, 
was  not  without  its  meaning  for  France  and  has  not 
366 


FRANCE 

spent  all  its  meaning  yet.  The  last  has  not  been  heard 
by  any  means  of  those  Jeunes  of  the  beginning  of  the 
century  who  rediscovered  Life. 


IV 


The  third  generation  of  Jeunes  rose  in  strange  con- 
trast to  its  predecessors.  The  first  toward  life  was 
sullen  and  loved  art.  The  second  chortlingly  embraced 
life  and  art.  The  third  came  up  cautiously  and  peered 
round.  It  looked  everything  over  with  a  circumspec- 
tion almost  uncanny  in  youth,  certainly  unknown  to 
the  Jeunes  of  before.  The  bitter  Anarchist  Jeunes 
rushed  into  their  Anarchism.  The  human  Jeunes 
plunged  into  the  praise  of  life.  The  third  Jeunes  at 
the  outset  were  wonderfully  cool  and  wise:  that  was 
the  first  characteristic  of  the  generation  just  before 
the  war.  No  one  blames  them  for  it,  but  they  did  take 
aback  those  who  had  been  the  Jeunes  before  them.  A 
few  months  before  the  war  France  was  ringing  with 
"Inquiries  into  the  Youth  of  France,"  the  boulevards 
were  feeling  Youth's  pulse,  Youth  was  allowing  itself 
seriously  to  be  diagnosed  and  probed  and  interviewed,* 
and  intellectual  Youth,  contemplative  Youth,  business 
Youth,  bankclerk,  shopwalking,  plowboy  Youth  gave 
its  opinions,  and  got  them  published,  about  "the 
new  France."  No  boulevards  had  ever  bothered  about 

*  Les  Jeunes  Gens  d'aujourdhui,  by  "Agathon,"  1918. 
367 


FRANCE 

the  earlier  Jeunes,  they  just  had  to  go  their  own 
way  uninterviewed.  The  new  Jeunes  were  much  more 
modern. 

Art,  to  begin  with,  they  looked  at  coolly,  that  is  the 
literary  art.  Of  the  old  enthusiasms  for  the  vers 
libre  and  for  recasting  French  verse  nothing  was  left. 
The  old  enthusiasm  for  putting  mysticism  into  French 
poetry  was  scarcely  even  remembered.  Neo-Classic- 
ism,  though  invented  long  before  in  the  days  of  the 
most  unclassic  Jeunes  of  the  second  period,  by  Mo- 
reas  among  others,  their  elder  and  not  of  them,  suited 
the  new  cool  temper  best.  The  temper  refused  to 
let  poetry  run  away  with  it  any  more.  Verhaeren  was 
no  longer  read,  he  belonged  to  the  Jeunes  of  yester- 
year, though  indeed  in  years  old  enough  to  be  the 
father  of  the  Jeunes  who  worshiped  him.  Poetic 
thought  was  neat  thought  to  be  put  into  neat  verse. 
Poetry  in  fact  was  no  longer  what  mattered  most,  and 
did  not  after  all  matter  much.  Life  mattered  most 
but  not  at  all  in  the  way  the  previous  Jeunes  who  dis- 
covered Life  meant.  Life  mattered  practically — a 
statement  surprising  to  the  Jeunes  of  before — and 
essentially  was  a  medium  for  getting  on.  "Then,  in 
the  days  of  the  old  Jeunes"  (wrote  a  new  Jeune), 
*'  'jeune'  meant  mad ;  to-day  it  means  sober,  measured, 
traditionalist,  praiseworthy."  This  sounds  as  if  it 
might  also  mean  prig. 

In  one  of  the  "inquiries"  into  French  youth  just 
368 


FRANCE 

before  the  war  this  trait  is  recorded.  At  a  College, 
the  Ecole  Normale,  the  highest  classical  college  in 
France,  toward  1900  a  man  asked  what  he  meant  to 
be  said  "a  notary,"  and  was  jeered  at  by  all  his  fellow 
collegiates.  "Nowadays,"  the  "inquiry"  says,  "one 
would  not  laugh  at  him."  The  man  did  become  a  no- 
tary, it  seems,  and  makes  money.  Why  should  not  a 
man  at  college  say  he  means  to  be  a  notary?  It  was 
not  etiquette  among  the  old  Jeunes  to  talk  of  taking 
up  a  profession  which  had  money  in  it.  Why  would 
the  man  have  been  applauded  toward  1910?  The 
notary's  had  become  a  reinstated  profession  in  young 
French  opinion,  a  profession,  of  course,  that  stands 
not  by  itself  but  by  vested  interests  and  capital.  How 
changed  the  new  Jeunes  from  the  old.  No  one  quar- 
reled with  them,  one  liked  the  parable  of  the  student 
who  was  derided  then  and  would  have  been  cheered 
now  for  wanting  to  be  a  notary ;  one  merely  noted  the 
change. 

The  new  Jeunes  did  want  to  get  on  and  to  get  on 
in  business  as  much  as  in  art,  letters  or  philosophy. 
That  was  the  only  really  new  France  just  before  the 
war:  a  youth  that  at  last  frankly  wanted  to  make 
money  and  was  not  ashamed  to  say  so.  The  war  came 
upon  a  young  France  that  was  trying  to  be  "Amer- 
ican," to  drop  the  old  European  fetish  of  the  "liberal 
professions"  and  the  old  French  fetish  of  the  "func- 
tionary" profession,  and  to  learn  to  put  the  trader, 
369 


FRANCE 

the  man  of  business,  the  practical  engineer  in  the 
same  rank  as  the  professor  or  the  Government  civil 
servant,  to  judge  all  by  the  same  simple  standard  of 
success.  This  was  really  new  in  France,  which  has 
always  had  the  business  spirit,  but  has  almost  always 
ranked  it  an  inferior  human  activity.  The  previous 
Jeunes,  who  discovered  the  mystic  humanness  of  Man 
and  that  even  the  grocer  was  a  brother,  yet  never 
dreamed  of  going  into  the  grocery  trade.  The  new 
Jeunes,  not  through  any  mystic  bent  at  all,  were  quite 
ready  to  take  up  grocery  without  any  false  shame  if 
grocery  were  the  way  to  get  on. 

The  not  at  all  mystical  new  Jeunes  yet  were  the 
first  generation  for  many  a  day  in  modern  France 
that  knew  a  religious  revival.  The  increased  hold  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  on  young  intellectual 
France  just  before  the  war  is  undoubted.  Simulta- 
neously came  two  other  novelties:  anti-intellectualism 
and  the  Camelots  du  Roi.  The  previous  Jeunes  were 
mystics  in  their  way  and  generally  against  Churches, 
were  mystical  but  certainly  as  intellectual  as  it  lay  in 
them  to  be,  were  no  politicians  (albeit  most  of  them, 
it  is  true,  were  Dreyfusards  in  their  day)  but  cer- 
tainly not  conservative  or  reactionary.  The  new 
Jeunes,  practical  and  reasonable,  in  numbers  pro- 
fessed perfect  Roman  Catholic  orthodoxy,  often  in- 
deed proclaiming  their  faith  with  some  display,  and 
advocating  in  so  many  words  a  "religious  realism" 
370 


FRANCE 

that  found  "safety"  in  a  traditional  doctrine.  At  the 
same  time,  they  (though  not  all  of  them)  invented  a 
new  crusade — down  the  intellect  and  act  first,  think 
afterward.  Finally  some  of  them,  mostly  the  militant 
Roman  Catholics,  started  the  vehement  Royalist  re- 
vival which  in  a  few  years  formed  propaganda  centers 
in  many  parts  of  France,  particularly  the  north  and 
the  extreme  south,  and  succeeded  in  bringing  off  a 
number  of  street  fights  with  the  police,  making  a 
good  deal  of  noise  and  generally  keeping  itself  in  the 
public  eye.  And  many  of  the  "King's  Hawkers" 
have  since  died  for  their  country.  "At  last,  one 
can  fight  and  not  be  run  in,"  said  one  in  the  trenches 
who  had  often  fought  the  Paris  police,  and  with  that 
he  led  the  attack  out  of  the  trenches  and  was  killed. 

Anti-intellectualism  was  a  curious  hybrid  by-prod- 
uct of  the  new  cult  of  getting  on  and  of  Bergsonism 
out-Bergsonized.  The  old  Jeunes  were  stagnant  pools 
of  intellectualism,  the  new  were  the  rushing  streams 
of  pragmatism.  "The  only  speculation  worthy  of  in- 
terest is  this :  what  is  there  to  do  and  how  must  it  be 
done?"  is  one  conclusion  of  an  inquiry  into  the  new 
Jeune's  frame  of  mind.  M.  Maurice  Barres,  repent- 
ant, wrote  in  the  same  inquiry:  "I  think  I  perceive 
that  in  these  past  twenty  years  the  denial  of  Mephis- 
topheles,  whom  we  thought  so  fine,  has  greatly  lost 
credit."  That  is,  Der  Geist  der  stets  vernelnt  is  not 
the  man  he  was.  There  is  something  in  that.  The 
371 


FRANCE 

old  Jeunes  may  have  made  too  much  of  the  everlast- 
ing No.  The  new  Jeunes  may  have  tried  to  find  the 
everlasting  Yes.  But  they  did  not  try  to  find  it  by 
thinking.  Many  of  them  professed  great  aversion 
from  philosophy,  metaphysics,  speculation  of  any 
kind,  and  any  thought  other  than  that  which  flies  to 
action,  with  which  doubt  ceases.  They  had,  wrote  one, 
an  idealism,  but  "an  active  idealism  without  any  love 
of  high  intellectual  contemplation  and  of  the  fine 
feasts  of  the  mind."  This  is  where,  against  his  in- 
tention (but  I  am  afraid  he  did  not  mind  the  popu- 
larity he  won)  Bergson  came  in  out-Bergsonized. 
Every  one  knows  his  great  dissection  of  a  purely  in- 
tellectual interpretation  of  things,  and  his  dazzling 
vindication  of  intuition  through  which  alone  the  "vital 
spring"  acts.  But  to  be  intuitive  to  the  extent  of 
doing  and  not  thinking  is  taking  Bergson  a  little  too 
literally. 

Asked  what  was  the  most  un-French  "ism"  one 
could  think  of  one  would  answer  anti-intellectualism. 
And  the  new  Jeunes  were  true  to  France  after  all. 
One  of  the  most  gifted  of  them  who  answered  in- 
quiries into  their  frame  of  mind  was  Ernest  Psichari, 
grandson  of  Ernest  Renan,  who  wrote  from  the  Afri- 
can army  where  he  was  a  lieutenant.  From  Africa 
he  went  to  the  front  at  the  war,  and  died  gallantly  in 
action.  He,  Renan's  grandson,  became  a  devout  Ro- 
man Catholic  and  there  was  tragedy  in  his  faith.  Must 
372 


FRANCE 

he  (he  asks  somewhere  in  his  writings)  believe  that 
the  great  and  good  grandfather  he  knew  is  damned 
forever?  In  a  horrible  vision  he  describes,  he  saw 
his  grandfather  back  in  the  Brittany  village  where 
Renan  was  born  and  bred,  and  the  grandson  in  his 
faith  turned  away  shuddering  from  his  grandfather, 
who  had  sinned  against  the  Holy  Ghost. 

But  Ernest  Psichari,  asked  for  his  opinion  upon 
the  new  Jeune  anti-intellectualism,  wrote:  "What- 
ever we  do,  we  shall  always  put  intelligence  above 
everything  else.  It  may  be  that  a  pure  heart  is 
preferable.  But  a  Frenchman  will  always  think  that 
a  sinner  is  more  agreeable  to  God  than  a  fool."  There 
spoke  the  true  grandson  of  Renan  after  all,  and  the 
true  Frenchman. 

What  the  Jeunes  of  after  the  war,  what  is  left  of 
them,  will  be,  no  one  can  tell.  They  will  have  come  out 
of  hell.  I  think  they  will  come  back  more  French 
than  ever,  with  indeed  a  fierce  and  strong  will  to  keep 
the  French  mind  and  the  mind  alive,  and  to  drown  in 
the  pursuits  of  intelligence,  if  possible,  the  memory 
of  all  the  horrors  a  savage  aggression  brought  upon 
their  country.  I  know  now  Jeunes  in  the  trenches  (I 
have  talked  with  them  there)  who  in  the  intervals  of 
throwing  hand  grenades  discuss  letters  and  art  and 
metaphysics.  They  all  agree  that  philosophy  and 
the  arts  are  the  only  pastimes  in  a  dugout  that  divert 
the  mind  from  the  war  ten  yards  away,  and  I  have 
373 


FRANCE 

read  a  good  essay  on  music  and  Wagner  in  particular 
which  was  written  in  the  Woevre  a  few  hundred  yards 
from  the  Boche  lines.  France  will  have  to  build  much 
up  again.  The  Jeunes  of  the  morrow  of  victory  will 
revive  the  ferment  of  thinking.  No  real  French  mind 
can  ever  forget  Henri  Poincare:  "Thought  is  but  a 
flash  of  lightning  in  the  midst  of  a  long  night.  But 
it  is  that  flash  that  is  everything." 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

A  complete  bibliography  of  France,  even  only  of 
France  to-day,  would  be  a  volume  itself.  The  fol- 
lowing merely  is  a  list  of  some  of  the  most  useful  and 
most  easily  accessible  books  about  modern  France, 
those  in  English  or  translated  into  English,  being 
chiefly  chosen. 

HISTORY 

VICTOR  DURUY — History  of  France  (Paris,  1892). 
Fairly  sound  and  accurate,  yet  not  written  with 
the  precision  of  modern  historical  science. 

MICHELET — History  of  France  (Paris,  1871  and 
after).  Less  accurate  for  facts,  but  a  much 
greater  literary  work  and  mostly  true  in  spirit. 

LAVISSE— History  of  France  (Paris,  1901-1911).  A 
work  by  fifteen  authors,  published  under  the  direc- 
tion of  the  well-known  historian  and  writer.  The 
soundest  and  most  modern  work  of  its  kind. 

HANOTAUX — Histoire  de  la  France  contemporaine 
(Paris,  1903-1908).  A  work  by  the  former  Min- 
ister of  Foreign  Affairs.  Good,  but  not  always 
accurate. 

SEIGNOBOS — Histoire  de  I'Europe  contemporaine 
(English  translation,  London,  1900).  Deals 
well  with  France  among  the  nations,  and  is  accu- 
rate, though  arid. 

377 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

TAINE — Origines  de  la  France  contemporaine  (Paris, 
1878-1894).  One  of  the  most  brilliant  works  of 
this  great  writer,  in  which  he  sets  forth  his  theory 
of  environment. 

CHARLES  DE  FREYCINET — Souvenirs,  1848-1893 
(Paris,  1913).  Valuable  recollections  by  the 
aged  statesman  who  was  Minister  of  War  in  1870 
and  Gambetta's  devoted  assistant  and  Minister  in 
the  Coalition  Government  in  the  present  war. 

A.  LEBON — Modern  France,  1789-1895  (Stories  of 
the  Nations  Series,  London,  1897). 

DESCRIPTIVE  WORKS 

VIDAL  DE  LA  BLACHE — La  France:  Tableaux  Geo- 
graphiques  (Paris,  1908).  By  the  greatest  French 
geographer  and  probably  the  greatest  of  all  geog- 
raphers. 

ELIS£ E  RECLUS — La  France.  Second  volume  of  Nou- 
velle  Geographic  Universelle  (Paris,  1885).  Sec- 
ond as  geographer  only  to  Vidal  de  La  Blache  and 
a  finer  and  more  philosophical  writer. 

TAINE — Journeys  Through  France  (English  transla- 
tion, London,  1897).  'A  typical  and  representa- 
tive work. 

ARDOTJIN-DTJMAZET — Voyages  en  France.  Extensive 
travel  books  all  over  France. 

A.  J.  C.  HARE — North  West  France,  1895.  North 
Eastern  France,  1897.  Days  Near  Paris,  1887. 
Paris,  1900.  (All  published  in  London).  The 
best  English  descriptive  books  of  France  in  their 
time  and  still  valuable. 

378 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

H.  BELLOC — The  Pyrenees  (London,  1909). 

E.    H.    BARKER — Wayfaring    in    France    (London, 

1913). 
MADAME  DUCLOS   (MARY  DARMSTETER) — Fields  of 

France  (London,  1905). 
ON^SIME  RECLUS — Le  plus  beau  Royaume  sous  le 

del  (Paris,  1899). 
P.  JOANNE — Dictionnaire  geographique  et  adminis- 

tratif  de  la  France,  8  vols.  (Paris,  1890-1905). 

FRANCE  TO-DAY 

J.  E.  C.  BODLEY — France  (London,  1899).  A 
standard  and  valuable  work,  though  distinctly 
prejudiced  against  Republican  France. 

M.  BETH  AM-ED  WARDS — France  of  To-day  (London, 
1892-94).  A  pleasant  book,  showing  a  good  deal 
of  knowledge  of  France  of  that  period. 

ABB£  DIMNET — France  Herself  Again  (London, 
1914).  By  a  French  priest  who  is  a  perfect  Eng- 
lish scholar.  An  interesting  book  published  at  the 
beginning  of  the  war,  and  informing,  if  its  vio- 
lent Roman  Catholic  bias  be  discounted. 

L.  JERROLD — The  Real  France  (London,  1911).  In 
part  studies  of  the  inner  workings  of  French 
politics. 

The  French  and  the  English  (London,  1913). 
By  the  same  author.  An  attempt  at  considering 
the  French  people  from  the  English  and  the  Eng- 
lish from  the  French  point  of  view. 

Louis  HOSOTTE — Histoire  de  la  Sieme  Republique, 
1870-1910.    Written  with  strong  anti-Republican 
bias,  but  a  useful  work  of  reference. 
379 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

'A.  L.  GUERARD — French  Civilisation  of  the  XlXth 
Century  (English  translation).  Contains  a  use- 
ful bibliography. 

FREDERICK  LAWTON — The  Third  French  Republic 
(London,  1909).  Of  use  though  superficial. 

CHARLES  DAWBARN — France  and  the  French  (Lon- 
don, 1911). 

E.  A.  VIZETELLY — Republican  France,  Her  Presi- 
dents, Statesmen  and  Policy  (London,  1914). 

C.  HEADLAM — France  (Making  of  the  Nations  Series, 
London,  1913). 

W.  S.  LILLY— The  New  France  (London,  1912).  In- 
teresting in  spite  of  its  unfortunate  title. 

BARRETT  WENDELL — France  of  To-day  (1907). 
Compiled  from  lectures  given  by  Professor  Wen- 
dell at  the  Sorbonne. 

W.  C.  BROWNELL — French  Traits  (1904).  A  bril- 
liant essay. 

FRANCE  TO-DAY  AND  EUROPEAN 
POLITICS 

Among  works  dealing  with  France  and  the  Euro- 
pean situation  preceding  the  war  are: 

W.  MORTON  FULLERTON — Problems  of  Power  (Lon- 
don, 1913).  A  comprehensive  and  valuable  sur- 
vey, with  particular  reference  to  France. 

PIERRE  ALBIN — Le  Coup  d'Agadir  (1912),  the  title 
of  which  is  sufficiently  explanatory. 

ANDRE"  CHERADAME — La  Crise  Francaise  (Paris, 
1912).  Relating  to  the  same  period. 

!ANDR£  TARDIEU — Algeciras. 
380 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

ANDR£  TARDIEU — La  France  et  ses  Allies. 

ANDR:£  MEVIL — Algeciras. 

"AGATHON"  (MM.  MASSIS  ET  TARDE) — Les  Jeunes 
Gens  d'Aujourdhui.  Of  topical  interest,  as  it  im- 
mediately preceded  the  war,  but  purely  special 
pleading.  (See  Chapter  "Les  Jeunes.") 

MARCEL  SEMBAT — Faites  un  roi,  sinon  faites  la  Paix. 
An  amusing  work,  all  the  more  paradoxical  now 
because  it  immediately  preceded  the  war,  and  its 
author  entered  the  French  Coalition  Government 
as  Cabinet  Minister. 

FRENCH   CONSTITUTION  AND  INTERNAL 
POLITICS 

JOHN  W.  BURGESS — Political  Science  and  Compara- 
tive Constitutional  Law  (Boston,  1896).  Con- 
taining particular  reference  to  France. 

A.  S.  BROWN — French  Law  and  Customs  for  the 
Anglo-Saxon  (London,  1914). 

BOUTMY — Etudes  de  Droit  Constitutional.  English 
translation  by  Dicey  (London,  1891). 

C.  F.  A.  CURRIER — Constitutional  and  Organic  Laws 
of  France,  1875-1889  (American  Academy  of 
Science  and  Philosophy,  Philadelphia,  1891). 

PAUL  SABATIER — Apropos  de  la  Separation  de 
I'Eglise  et  de  I'Etat  (English  translation,  Lon- 
don, 1906). 

JOHN  WENZEL — Comparative  View  of  the  Executive 
and  Legislative  Departments  of  the  Governments 
of  the  United  States,  France,  England  and  Ger~ 
many  (Boston,  1891). 

381 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

RAYMOND  POINCAR£  (President  of  the  Republic) — 
How  France  Is  Governed  (English  popular  edi- 
tion, London,  1915). 

DUGTJIT  ET  MONIER — Les  Constitutions  et  les  Prin- 
clpales  Lois  Politiques  de  la  France  Depuis,  1789 
(Paris,  1898). 

HENRI  LEYRET — Le  President  de  la  Republique 
(Paris,  1913).  Particularly  valuable  for  the 
study  of  the  subject  of  executive  authority  in  the 
modern  French  State. 

JULES  JAURES — Histoire  du  Sociallsme. 

PAUL  Louis — L'Ouvrier  devant  rEtat. 

PAUL  Louis — Histoire  du  Mouvement  Syndlcal  en 
France,  1789-1910. 

PAUL  Louis — Le  Syndlcallsme  contre  rEtat. 

LITERATURE 

PETIT  DE  JULLEVILLE — Histoire  de  la  Langue  et  de 
la  Lltterature  Francaise,  8  vols.  (Paris,  1896-9). 
A  valuable  work,  though  here  and  there  incom- 
plete. 

FERDINAND  BRUNETIERE — Manuel  de  la  Lltterature 
Francaise.  A  brilliant  but  strongly  opiniated 
work. 

PROFESSOR  DO\FDEN — History  of  French  Literature 
(London,  1895). 

PROFESSOR  SAINTBURY — Short  History  of  French 
Literature  (1882).  Sixth  edition,  continued  to 
the  end  of  the  century  (1901). 

CATULLE  MENDES — Le  Mouvement  Poetique  Francois 
de  1867  a  1900  (Paris,  1903).  A  very  valuable 
382 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

and  complete  work  for  the  period  covered.  The 
late  writer,  himself  a  poet,  or  rather  a  brilliant 
versifier  of  the  Parnassian  school,  compiled  it  at 
the  request  of  the  French  Government  on  the  oc- 
casion of  the  last  Paris  World's  Fair  of  1900. 
HENRY  JAMES — French  Poets  and  Novelists.  New 
edition  (London,  1916). 

COLONIES 

M.  FALLEX  and  A.  MAIREY — La  France  et  ses  Colo- 
nies au  debut  du  XXieme  siecle  (Paris,  1909). 

With  numerous  bibliographies. 
ELISEE   RECLUS — Nouvelle   Geographic    Universelle. 

Vols.  8,  11,  12  and  13. 
CHAII/LEY-BERT — La    Colonisation    de    I'lndo-Chine 

(Paris,    1892).      English    translation    (London, 

1894). 
PRINCE    HENRI    D'ORLEANS — Autour    du     Tonkin 

(Paris,  1896). 
PRINCE  HENRI  D'ORLEANS — Du  Tonkin  aux  Indes 

(Paris,    1897).      English    translation    (London, 

1897). 
PAUL    LEROY-BEAUUEU — L'Algerie    et    la    Tunisie 

(Paris,  1897). 
ANDR£  LEBON — La  Politique  de  la  France  en  Afrique, 

1896-8  (Paris,  1901). 

ONESIME  RECLUS — Algerie  et  Tunisie  (Paris,  1909). 
M.  D.  STOTT — The  Real  Algeria  (London,  1914). 
SIR  HARRY  JOHNSTON — The  Colonization  of  Africa 

(Cambridge,  1899). 

383 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

F.  FOUREAU — Au  Sahara:  rn.es  deux  missions  de 

et  1893  (Paris,  1897). 

Documents  Scientifiques  de  la  Mission  Sahar- 

ienne,  etc.  (Paris,  1903-5). 
COL.      GAI/LIENI — Deux     Campagnes     au     Soudan 

Francals  (Paris,  1891). 
J.  SCOTT  KEI/TIE — The  Partition  of  Africa,  second 

edition  (London,  1895). 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abd  El  Kader,  mentioned,  132. 

Alexandrine  verse:  reappearance  of,  308;  character  of, 
320-322,  325. 

Algegiras  Conference,  80. 

Algeria:  France  in,  53,  54;  efficiency  of  French  rule  in,  128; 
Arabs  from  fight  for  France,  134;  represented  in  Par- 
liament, 136;  municipal  government  in,  137. 

Allies:  retreat  of  from  Mons  and  Charleroi,  169-177;  bar 
road  to  Calais,  178. 

Alsace-Lorraine:  France  would  not  have  declared  war  to 
win  back,  1;  remains  French  in  spirit,  36,  37;  French 
desire  to  win  back,  83;  mentioned,  159. 

Amiel,  mentioned,  359. 

Anarchists:  likely  to  have  a  freehold,  39;  bomb  outrages 
by,  363,  364;  mentioned,  208. 

An  der  Tag,  German  toast  to,  1. 

Annam,  remains  loyal,  129. 

Anti-Clericalism:  mainly  political,  191;  waning,  192;  "bad 
form,"  199;  peasants  and,  246-248,  250. 

Architecture,  no  modern  advance,  352,  353. 

Army:    in  peace,  138-157;  in  war,  158-180. 

"Art  for  art's  sake,"  359-361. 

Art,  in  modern  France,  351. 

Artisans,  position  of,  207-210. 

Associations  cultuelles,  formation  of,  194. 

August  1,  1914,  date  of  mobilization,  3. 

August  4,  1787,  overshadowed,  5. 

August  4,  1914:    described,  5,  6;  mentioned,  12. 

Austria,  cordial  French  relations  with,  80. 

Balkan  Wars,  touch  Austria-Hungary,  81. 

Balzac,  Honore:  true  to  French  life,  241;  part  Romanticist, 
315;  art  of,  340. 

Banville,  Theodore  de,  works  of,  344. 

Barbizon  school,  351. 

Barr&s,  Maurice,  president  of  League  of  Patriots,  359. 

Basques:  language  of,  23,  24;  keep  to  themselves,  26;  men- 
tioned, 242. 

Baudelaire:  quoted,  258,  285;  works  of,  342-344;  mentioned, 
318,  326,  362. 

Belgium,  France  avoids  suspicion  of  invading,  8. 

Berbers:   in  revolt,  130;  held  in  check,  131. 

387 


INDEX 


Bergson,  Henry:  philosophy  of,  61;  philosophy  of  un- 
French,  351;  mentioned,  183,  371,  372. 

Bergsonism,  51,  371. 

Berlioz,  art  of,  353. 

Bernstein,  Henry,  character  of  his  plays,  311. 

Birth-rate,  299,  300. 

Bismarck,  Otto  von:  policy  of,  79;  mentioned,  97,  333. 

Bizet,  works  of.  354. 

Boches,  mentioned,  16,  164,  267,  272. 

Bodley,  opinion  of  on  parties  in  France,  113. 

Boileau,  mentioned,  359. 

Bonapartists,  190. 

Bordeaux:  flight  to,  270;  remote  from  the  war,  274,  276. 

Boulanger,  General:  might  have  been  elected  Emperor,  94; 
characterized,  335. 

Boulangism:  threatens  Republic,  76;  crushed,  96;  men- 
tioned, 93,  97,  101,  109,  152. 

Boulevardier,  is  dying  out,  262,  263. 

Bourgeois:  opinion  of  other  ways  of  living,  76;  mentioned, 
205. 

Bourgeois,  Leon,  characterized,  335. 

Bourgeoisie:  the  type  of  a  class,  39;  spirit  of,  148,  149; 
knows  its  own  business,  74;  description  of,  219-237. 

Bourget,  Paul,  quoted,  183. 

Boutroux,  Professor,  his  book  on  natural  law,  183. 

Bretons,  assimiliation  of,  26. 

Briand,  Aristide:  breaks  railway  strike,  61,  62;  quoted,  104; 
early  advice  to  workmen  about  war,  146;  character- 
ized, 336;  mentioned,  271. 

Brisson,  Henri,  characterized,  335. 

British:  in  early  operation  of  the  war,  8,  9;  attitude  of 
officers  toward  men,  162,  163. 

Button,  his  definition  of  style,  43. 

Bullies,  the  curse  of  certain  French  towns,  292,  293. 

Cabinet:  powers  of,  89;  balance  of  in  system,  95,  99;  In  war, 
100. 

Caillaux,  Madame,  trial  of,  13. 

Carnot,  Sadi,  assassinated,  95,  96. 

Casablanca,  incident  of,  61,  62,  80. 

Caserio,  assassinates  Carnot,  96. 

Casimir-P6rier,  resigns,  92. 

Castelnau,  General,  a  Royalist,  180. 

Catholic  Church:  adapted  to  the  French,  47;  power  of  in 
army,  153,  154;  its  place  and  recent  history  in 
France,  181-202;  power  of,  287;  revival  of,  329,  331. 

Catholicism,  revival  of,  41. 


INDEX 


Chamber  of  Deputies:  historic  meeting  in,  5;  election  of,  86; 
helps  elect  President,  87;  right  of  President  to  dis- 
solve, 88;  part  of  in  election  of  President,  94;  atti- 
tude of  society  toward,  102;  reflected  by  Senate,  111; 
colonial  representatives  in,  136;  mentioned,  90,  106, 
113. 

Chant  du  Depart,  sung  during  mobilization,  4. 

Charleroi:  Arabs  fight  at,  134;  why  French  were  beaten  at, 
169;  mentioned,  8,  9,  11,  159,  168,  173,  175. 

Chateau,  The,  influence  of  in  rural  France,  248,  249. 

Chateaubriand:  prose  of,  315;  poetry  and  prose  of,  339. 

Child,  characteristics  of  in  France,  300-303. 

Church  of  Rome:  opposes  the  Republic,  96;  demands  free- 
dom in  France,  105;  always  under  suspicion,  109;  re- 
establishment  of  denied,  110;  influence  over  peasants, 
241.  See  also  CATHOLIC  CHUBCH. 

Cities,  description  of,  258-277. 

Clemenceau,  Georges:  an  iron-handed  Prime  Minister,  31; 
denounces  Poincare',  99,  100;  ends  the  "wine  war," 
254;  characterized,  335-338. 

Clericalism:  identified  with  nationalism,  109;  mentioned, 
110. 

Cochin  China,  represented  in  Parliament,  136. 

Code  Napoleon,  extension  in  colonies,  137. 

Combes,  Emile,  characterized,  335. 

Committee  of  Reprieves,  91. 

Commune,  mentioned,  30,  255. 

Comte,  Auguste:  set  up  a  new  religion,  183;  mentioned, 
349. 

Concordat,  The,  revocation  of,  186  et  seq. 

Congress  of  Versailles,  forms  constitution,  86. 

Constitution:  a  makeshift,  95;  not  adapted  to  war,  100; 
transformed  into  autocracy,  101. 

Corneille:  revival  of,  309;  mentioned,  313. 

Corot,  351. 

Coup  d'Agadir:  influence  of  in  France,  60,  61,  62;  men- 
tioned, 80. 

Cousin,  Victor,  eschews  mysticism,  183. 

Crown  Prince,  in  invasion  of  France,  170. 

Cur6,  influence  of,  248-250. 

Daudet,  Alphonse,  works  of,  346. 

Debussy,  Claude,  works  of,  355. 

Decadentism:  a  pose  of  early  Jeunes,  365;  mentioned,  318. 

Delcasse,  M.:  dismissed  at  bidding  of  Emperor,  61,  62,  80. 

Deroulede,  Paul:  his  poem  "En  Avant,"  2;  quoted,  6;  at- 
tempts to  precipitate  a  revolution,  155;  leads  anti- 
Lohengrin  riots,  363;  mentioned,  105. 


INDEX 


Descartes:  a  representative  French  philosopher,  42;  men- 
tioned, 183. 

Diderot,  sapped  religion,  40. 

Divine  Average,  discussed  by  Jeunes,  365. 

Dreyfusards,  370. 

Dreyfus  case:  threatens  civil  war,  76;  mentioned,  93,  96, 
101,  109,  153,  191,  335. 

Duhamel,  George,  331. 

Dumas,  works  of  the  two,  345. 


Education,  uniformity  of,  33,  118,  119. 

Edward  VII,  offers  entente  cordiale,  79,  80. 

Egypt:  England  in,  80;  France  resigns  interest  in,  81. 

Emir  Khaled,  fights  for  France,  132. 

Emperor  William  II:  visits  Tangier,  80;  Turkish  report  of 
speech  in  Paris,  132.  See  also  GEBMAX  EMPEBOK, 

"En  Avant,"  quotation  from,  2. 

Encyclopedists,  sap  religion,  40. 

England:  forced  into  the  war,  15;  interest  in  balance  of 
power,  82;  King  of  may  be  impeached,  87;  her  prob- 
lems of  church  and  state,  188;  mentioned,  205. 

English:  less  unified  than  the  French,  22;  influence  of 
spread  by  acts  rather  than  ideas,  35;  cock-sure,  68. 

Entente  Cordiale,  offered  by  Edward  VII,  79,  80. 


Fallieres,  President:  use  of  pardoning  power,  91;  a  wooden 

majesty,  95;  mentioned,  97,  98,  99. 
Family:  foreign  ideas  of,  278,  279;  the  real,  279  et  seq. 
Faure,  Felix:   plan  to  make  Emperor  of,  93;   not  a  "King 

Log,"  96,  97;  funeral  of,  155. 
Ferry,  Jules,  characterized,  334. 
Ficke,  Karl,  executed  as  German  agent,  131,  132. 
Figaro,  editor  of  shot,  13. 

Flaubert,  Gustave:  outbreak  of,  310;  little  poetry  in  writ- 
ings of,  315;    sometimes  swamped  by  his  art,  346; 

mentioned,  237. 

Foch,  General,  telegram  of  to  Joffre,  173. 
France:  Anatole,  can  have  no  school,  310;  mentioned,  309, 

346. 

Franck,  CSsar,  his  work,  354. 
Franco-Russian  alliance,  formed,  79,  80. 
French,  General:  interview  of  with  Joffre  before  battle  of 

the  Marne,  171;  sends  message  to  Joffre,  172;  race  for 

sea,  177. 
French  Canadians,  more  French  than  the  French,  36. 

390 


INDEX 


French  Congo,  troops  from  help  conquer  German  Cameroon, 

135. 
French    Reformed    Church,    abets    state    against    Catholic 

Church,  196. 
French    Revolution,    obeyed    French    spirit,    29;    Europe's 

opinion  of,  77;  mentioned,  76. 
"French  spirit":  has  no  equivalent  as  real  in  other  people, 

26;    character    of    and    future    of,    28-66;     hold    of 

churches  upon,  181;  prefers  a  tried  religion,  182. 
Functionarism,  account  of,  121-125. 

Gallican  movement,  185,  .186,  189-191,  193,  194. 

Gallie'ni,  General,  forms  army  of  Paris,  174. 

Gambetta,  M.:  in  Franco-Prussian  war,  12;  quoted,  190;  his 
four  famous  phrases,  334;  mentioned,  335. 

Gautier,  Th.6opb.ile,  work  of,  344. 

German  Emperor:  hoots  for,  4;  will  uphold  Austria,  IS; 
said  to  be  for  peace,  14;  forces  dismissal  of  Delacasse", 
61.  See  also  EMPEBOB  WILLIAM  II. 

German  Empire:  growth  of,  77;  Franco-Russian  alliance 
formed  against  Triple  Alliance,  79;  strengthens  army, 
81;  threatens  France,  82;  fails  to  make  Alsace  Ger- 
man, 83;  attacks  France,  83;  explodes  fallacy  that 
war  is  not  profitable,  138;  mentioned,  117.  See  also 
GEBMANS  AND  GERMANY. 

Germans:  failure  of  in  psychology  of  their  enemies,  7,  8,  16; 
in  operations  leading  to  the  Marne,  8-11;  surprised 
by  French  stamina,  17;  imperial  thought  of,  27;  fail 
to  efface  French  spirit  in  Alsace,  36,  37;  effort  to  kill 
French  spirit  in  1914,  65. 

Germany:  chose  day  for  war,  1;  gave  France  her  opportu- 
nity for  revenge,  2;  declares  war,  IS,  14;  declares 
Kriegsgefalirzustand,  14;  sends  ultimatum  to  Bel- 
gium, 15;  mentioned,  21;  fist  and  fancy  of,  22;  de- 
velops coal  mines  in  Normandy,  55,  56;  France  to  be 
run  by,  65,  66;  attempts  at  understanding  with,  80; 
attempt  to  cause  revolt  in  Morocco,  131,  134;  and  in 
Laos  and  Yunnan,  135;  army  of  compared  with  that 
of  France,  147-149;  attitude  of  officers  toward  men, 
161,  162;  papers  of  jest  about  French  mobilization, 
166;  advance  of  to  Marne,  168-174;  why  defeated  at 
the  Marne,  174-177;  in  battle  for  Calais,  177,  178;  at- 
tempt on  Verdun,  178,  179;  mentioned,  267,  268.  See 
also  GERMANS  AND  GEBMAN  EMPIBE. 

Gounod,  his  music,  354. 

Gourmont,  Remy  de:  a  Jeune,  358;  praises  Voltaire,  359; 
indifference  to  Alsace-Lorraine,  363. 

391 


INDEX 


Great  Britain:  troops  of  not  yet  arrived,  8;  stands  back.  15; 

Celts  in,  21;   has  not  tried  Imperial  federation,  34; 

freeholders  in,  56;  "splendid  isolation"  of,  79;  French 

refuse  to  cooperate  with  in  Egypt,  80. 
Great  War:  suspends  literature,  307;  mentioned,  60. 
Gr6vy,  Jules:  ruined  by  son-in-law,  95;  a  great  lawyer,  96. 
Grundler,  Herr,  executed  as  a  German  agent,  131. 
Guiana,  represented  in  Parliament,  136. 
Guilbert,  Yvette,  story  of,  303. 
Guizot,    little   remembered   except    for    "enrichissez-vous," 


H6r6dia,  JosS  Maria,  works  of,  344,  345. 

Hobereau,  the  small  country  gentleman,  254,  255,  257. 

Hugo,  Victor:  a  Romanticist,  314;  characterized,  341;  men- 
tioned, 338,  342. 

Huguenots:  first  of  all  Frenchmen,  29;  a  small  minority, 
181. 

lie  de  France:  crystallization  of  countries  round,  28;  men- 
tioned, 339. 

Imperialists:  advocate  change  in  election  of  President,  89; 
slowly  dwindle,  110;  some  rally  to  Republic,  189; 
mentioned,  113,  191. 

Indo-China:  France  in,  54;  local  government  in,  1S7. 

Italy:  understanding  of  France  with,  80;  captures  Tripoli, 
81. 

Jansenists,  stamped  out,  181. 

Jaures,  Jean:  assassinated,  5;  daughter  of  confirmed,  288; 
debate  of  with  Clemenceau,  337,  338;  mentioned,  215, 
216. 

Jeunes:  revolt  of,  50;  history  of,  350-374. 

Jewish  Church,  status  of,  195,  196. 

Jews:  assimilation  of,  37,  38. 

Joan  of  Arc:  spirit  of  still  lives,  66;  not  a  miracle,  356; 
songs  about,  359. 

Joffre,  Joseph:  appeal  of  to  troops,  8,  165;  announces  vic- 
tory, 10;  his  great  retrieval,  11;  not  the  sort  of  gen- 
eral the  Germans  had  expected,  17;  plan  of,  171-173; 
position  of  before  German  rush  for  Calais,  177;  re- 
ligion and  politics  of,  180;  mentioned,  271. 

Kaiser,  mentioned,  271. 

Kluck,  General  von:  march  of,  9-11;  in  invasion  of  France, 

170,  174. 

Kriegsgefahrzustand,  declared  by  Germany,  14. 
Kronprinz,  defeated,  10. 
Kultur,  65,  66. 

392 


INDEX 


La  Fontaine:    irregular  verse  of,  323;  mentioned,  2,  25. 

La  Rochefoucauld,  on  marriage,  298. 

Lamartine:  poetic  eloquence  of,  339;  mentioned,  44. 

Lavigerie,  Cardinal,  attitude  of  toward  Republic,  191. 

League  of  Patriots,  359,  863. 

Lebceuf,  Marshal,  saying  of  in  1870,  167. 

Le  Gateau,  battle  of,  9. 

Lemaltre,  Jules,  mentioned,  346. 

Le  Matin,  editor  of  excited  over  British  course,  15. 

Leo  XIII,  advises  French  Catholics  to  accept  the  Republic, 

188,  189. 

L'HaMt  Vert,  burlesques  French  President,  91. 
Liege:  Belgian  sacrifices  at,  8;  capture  of,  168. 
Lisle,  Leconte  de,  works  of,  344. 
Literature:  character  of  French,  43;  discussion  of,  307-332; 

the  leaders  in,  338-348. 
Lotl,  Pierre,  works  of,  346. 
Loubet,  Emile,  presidency  of,  97,  98. 
Louis  XIV:  spirit  of  still  lives,  84,  105;  mentioned,  68,  87, 

103,  104,  250. 

Louis  Quatorze.    See  Lotus  XIV. 
Luxembourg,  invaded,  14,  15. 
Lyautey,  General:  report  on  Colonial  troops  sent  to  France, 

130,  132;  on  German  propaganda  in  Morocco,  131. 
Lyons,  characteristics  of,  274. 

Madagascar:  remains  loyal,  129;  native  troops  kept  in,  135. 

Madame  Bovary,  201. 

Maeterlinck,  Maurice:  turns  from  mystery  drama,  311;   a 

prose  poet  in  his  earlier  days,  526;  a  French  master, 

338;  mentioned,  346,  347. 
Mallarmg,  Stephane,  story  about,  360,  361. 
Man,  characteristics  of  the  French,  278-306. 
Manoury,  General:  attacks  Germans  in  rear,  171;  how  his 

army  was  formed,  174. 
Marne,  battle  of:  a  supreme  retrieval,  8-11;  a  surprise  to 

the  Germans,  17;  saved  France,  165;  account  of,  172- 

177;  mentioned,  159,  168. 
Marselllais,  characteristics  of,  274. 
Marseillaise:  sung  during  mobilization,  4;   mentioned,  66; 

Rude's  store  singers  of,  353. 
Maupassant,  Guy  de:    his  Norman  peasants  true  to  life, 

241;  followers  of,  309,  310;  works  of,  345-348;  men- 
tioned, 281,  291,  316,  346,  347,  348. 
McMahon,  President,  dissolves  chamber,  88. 
Merrill,  Stuart,  a  Jeune,  358. 
Michelet,  works  of,  345. 
Millet,  351. 

393 


INDEX 


Mistral,  revives  Provencal,  23. 

Moliere:  exuberant  fun  of,  315;  mentioned,  44,  50,  66,  323, 

325,  341. 

Monarchists,  wish  a  more  powerful  President,  89. 
Mons:  a  severe  defeat  for  Allies,  169;  mentioned,  8,  9. 
Moreas,  Jean:  death  of,  308;  like  Racine,  809;  works  of,  328, 

345. 

Moroccans,  as  soldiers,  133,  135,  137. 
Morocco:    France  in,  63,  54,  61,  80,  81;  remains  loyal,  129, 

132. 

Mulud,  festivity  of  celebrated  in  midst  of  war,  130. 
Murger,  Henri,  his  tale  of  Bohemianism,  304. 
Music,  modern  French,  353-355. 
Musset,  Alfred  de:   a  Bohemian  in  life,  339;   writings  of, 

340;  mentioned,  341,  342. 
Mysticism:   no  broad  current  of  in  medieval  France,  40; 

French  not  inclined  to,  41-43,  47,  183. 


Namur,  Belgian  sacrifices  at,  8. 

Nancy,  In  war-time,  275,  276. 

Napoleon  I:  understood  French  spirit,  30;  remaps  Europe, 
84;  shaped  administration  of  France,  106;  dispos- 
sesses University  of  Paris,  118;  a  builder  of  modern 
France,  332,  33S;  mentioned,  77,  116,  175. 

Napoleon  III:  uses  army  in  politics,  151;  an  accident,  334; 
mentioned,  31. 

Navy,  sacrificed  to  army,  149,  150. 

Neo-Classicism,  still  flourishing  at  beginning  of  century, 
308,  309;  in  the  Jeune  movement,  359,  368;  men- 
tioned, 328,  345. 

Ordre  de  mobilisation,  Issuance  of,  3. 

Panther,  sent  to  Agadir,  61. 

Paris:  unafraid,  6,  7;  In  danger,  9-11;  under  Second  Em- 
pire, 52;  Germans  near,  170,  171,  173,  175;  Taubes 
over,  174;  phases  of  life  in,  222;  the  "many  Parises," 
258-266;  in  war,  266-273;  mentioned,  119,  129,  132, 
140,  142,  143,  206,  207,  221,  239,  292,  293. 

Parliament:  powers  of,  89,  95;  balance  of  in  system,  95,  99; 
assembles  In  1914,  101;  workings  of,  102-114;  the 
Parliamentary  system,  115  et  seg.;  Colonial  repre- 
sentation in,  136. 

Parliamentary  Socialist  party,  213,  215. 

Parnassians,  317. 

Pascal,  quoted,  73. 

Peasant,  description  of,  239-257. 

394 


INDEX 

Petite  bourgeoisie:  has  capital,  however  small,  207;  men- 
tioned, 204,  229. 

Petit  Journal,  227. 

Petit  Parisien,  227. 

Philosophy:  character  of  in  France,  41,  42;  discussed,  348- 
351. 

Pleinairist  school,  351. 

Poincare,  Henri,  quoted,  374. 

Poincarg,  Raymond:  Radicals  object  to  powers  of,  92;  as- 
sassination of  reported,  101;  characterized,  336;  men- 
tioned, 13,  98,  99,  337. 

Pomairols,  Charles  de,  quoted,  257. 

Positivism,  is  dead,  183. 

Prefects:  represent  state,  106;  in  elections,  120. 

President:  how  chosen,  86,  87,  94,  95;  successor  of  Louis 
Quatorze,  87;  position  of,  87  et  seq.;  balance  of  in  sys- 
tem, 95,  99;  dictator  in  war-time,  100;  change  in 
election  of  suggested,  103. 

Provencal,  remade  by  Mistral,  23. 

Prudhomme,  Sully,  works  of,  344. 

Prussia,  remembers  Napoleon,  77. 

Prussian  Guards,  success  of,  9. 

Prussians,  mentioned,  268. 

Pslchari,  Ernest,  grandson  of  Renan,  372;  opinion  of  on 
new  Jeune  anti-intellectualism,  373. 

Racine,  mentioned,  44,  309. 

Railway  strike,  account  of,  61,  62. 

Rallies,  189. 

Realism,  character  of,  315-318. 

Reims,  characteristics  of,  275. 

Renan,  Ernest,  mentioned,  66,  346,  347,  372. 

Revanchards:  power  of  a  fiction,  1;  DeroulSde  the  chief  of,  2. 

Revolution  of  1848,  mentioned,  30. 

Rodin,  works  of,  352. 

Rolland,  Romain,  works  of,  310. 

Remains,  Jules,  331. 

Roman  Catholic  Church,  increased  hold  of  on  young  intel- 
lectual France,  370.  See  also  CATHOLIC  CHUBCH, 
ROMAN  CATHOLICISM  and  ROMAN  CATHOLICS. 

Roman  Catholicism,  effect  of  revival  of  upon  literature,  329, 
331. 

Roman  Catholics:  hold  of  over  French,  182;  favor  Royal- 
ists, 371. 

Romanticism:  account  of,  312-316;  mentioned,  344. 

Rostand,  Edmond,  his  acrobatics  in  verse,  328. 

Rousseau,  Theodore,  351. 

Rousseau,  Waldeck,  pulled  France  through  Dreyfus  crisis, 
335. 

395 


INDEX 


Royalists:    make  common  cause  with  their  political  ene- 
mies, 5,  6;  some  rally  to  Republic,  189,  190. 
Rude,  his  singers  of  the  Marseillaise,  353. 
Russia:  national  thought  in,  27;  alliance  of  France  with,  79. 

Saint-Saens,  art  of,  354. 

Salvation  Army,  failure  of  in  France,  182. 

Sand,  George,  characterized,  S41. 

Sardou,  mentioned,  311. 

Schoen,  Baron  von:  says  Germany  will  uphold  Austria,  13; 
hands  in  declaration  of  war,  14. 

Science,  French,  349. 

Second  Empire:  life  under,  52;  a  fool's  paradise,  78;  men- 
tioned, 30. 

Senate:  election  of,  87;  part  of  in  election  of  President,  94; 
reflects  Chamber,  111;  Colonial  representatives  in, 
136;  mentioned,  90,  105. 

Senegal,  represented  in  Parliament,  136. 

Senegalese:  as  soldiers,  133,  134,  137;  representation  in 
Parliament,  136. 

Socialism:  problem  of  in  France,  113;  little  understood  by 
the  peasantry,  252;  Jaures  speaks  about,  337,  338. 

Socialists:  likely  to  have  investments,  39;  their  plan  for  an 
army,  156;  probable  future  of,  217,  218;  land  na- 
tionalization plan  of  will  not  suit  peasant,  251;  men- 
tioned, 215,  216. 

Suffragettes,  few  in  France,  288. 

Symbolism:  wave  of,  308,  309;  discussion  of,  312,  315,  316, 
318-328;  a  phase  of  the  Jeune  movement,  359,  360. 

Syndicalism:  fear  of  76;  originated  in  France,  213;  descrip- 
tion of  in  France,  215-218. 

Tailbade,  Laurent,  story  of,  363. 

Talleyrand,  333. 

Taubes,  fly  over  Paris,  6,  7,  174,  267,  273. 

Thiers,  President:  stood  up  against  Bismarck,  97;  charac- 
terized, 333. 

Third  Republic:  did  not  weaken  France,  11;  made  mis- 
takes, 12;  confirmed  French  political  spirit,  30;  life 
under,  52;  Europe's  wrong  conception  of,  77;  had  to 
face  hard  facts,  78;  three  periods  of,  79;  under  it 
France  regained  her  position  among  the  nations,  81, 
82;  Colonial  expansion  under,  82;  constitution  of,  86; 
Powers  of  President  in,  88;  criticisms  of,  92;  why  it 
has  endured,  93;  wisdom  of,  94;  constitution  of  a 
makeshift,  95;  struggles  of,  96;  constitution  of  not 
adapted  to  war,  100;  yet  elastic,  101;  legislative  pro- 

396 


INDEX 


Third  Republic — Continued. 

gram  of,  105;  ruling  parties  in,  112;  army  under, 
149-152,  160;  relations  of  Church  with,  187  et  seq.; 
supported  by  the  peasants,  243,  245;  mentioned,  87, 
89,  100,  108,  116,  179,  194,  195,  246,  362. 

Tonkin,  remains  loyal,  129. 

Tours,  characteristics  of,  275. 

Trade  Union:  attitude  of  artisans  toward,  209;  status  of  in 
France,  210-218. 

Triple  Alliance,  balance  of  with  Triple  Entente,  81. 

Triple  Entente,  mentioned,  79,  80,  81,  82. 

Tripoli,  Italy  in,  80,  81. 

Tunisia:  France  in,  53;  Arabs  from  fight  for  France,  134; 
municipal  government  in,  137. 

Turco,  drives  German  officer,  161. 

"Ultramontanes,"  fight  Gallicans,  186. 

Unified  Socialists:  make  common  cause  with  their  political 

enemies,  5,  6;   French  in  spirit,  59;  hold  aloof,  110; 

sometimes  in  favor,  111;   strength  in  1910,  114;  and 

"Wine  War,"  254;  mentioned,  102,  112,  113. 
University  of  Paris:   oldest  in  history,  118;    recovers  its 

charter,  119. 

Verdun:  defense  of,  178,  179;  mentioned,  170. 

Verhaeren,  Emile:  probably  greatest  of  Symbolists,  327, 
328;  works  of,  345,  366;  is  no  longer  read,  368. 

Verlaine:  quoted,  319;  one  of  the  greatest  of  French  poets, 
320;  a  poet  of  allusion,  326;  characterized,  341,  342; 
satire  on,  360. 

Versification,  laws  of  French,  321-323. 

Vers  Hire,  use  of  by  Symbolists,  321-326. 

Vigny,  Alfred  de:  somberness  of,  314;  quoted,  339;  men- 
tioned, 44. 

Villon,  Frangois,  very  human,  325. 

Viviani,  M.,  absent  from  France,  13. 

Voltaire:  sapped  religion,  40;  a  type  of  the  foes  of  the 
Church,  182;  mentioned,  66,  337,  358,  359. 

Wage-earners,  their  position  and  prospects,  204-206. 
Wagner,  folklore  of  repugnant  to  French,  338;   influence  of 

upon  French  music,  353-355. 
Whitman,  Walt:  on  marriage,  298;   a  singer  of  democracy, 

329;  influence  of  in  France,  366;  mentioned,  339,  345. 
Wilson,  Daniel,  sells  orders  of  Legion  of  Honor,  95. 
"Wine  War,"  character  of,  253,  254. 
Woman,  characteristics  of  the  French,  278-306. 

Yser,  battle  of,  178. 

397 


INDEX 

Zeppelins:    visit  Paris,  £67,   273;    are  faced  unflinchingly, 

272. 
Zola,  Emile:  true  to  French  life,  241;  how  he  wrote  Nana, 

316,  317;  had  no  humor,  346;  mentioned,  264. 


